Oral Answers to Questions

TRANSPORT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Bus Companies

Kevin Brennan: What plans he has to allow more commercial freedom for municipally owned bus companies.

Tony McNulty: May I convey my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's apologies for his absence? He has written to the Opposition and your good self, Mr. Speaker. He is taking part in the Transport Council in Brussels.
	The Government have no plans to make changes to municipally owned bus companies.

Kevin Brennan: I am glad that my right hon. Friend is in Brussels, which has an excellent municipally owned bus company, just as Cardiff has. Is it not about time that we looked again at the commercial freedom of municipally owned bus companies, which are shackled by the regulations introduced under the Tories in the 1980s, when there was a fetish for privatisation? Is it not time to consider giving them the freedom to develop properly integrated public transport systems in our cities?

Tony McNulty: My hon. Friend will know that municipally owned bus companies operate in a competitive market, alongside private sector buses, in some 17 towns and cities in this country. I am happy to share his comments about the efficacy of Cardiff's municipal bus company, but the Government intend that those companies should continue to be free to get on with the business of running their buses, without any advantage or disadvantage because of their municipal status.

Chris Grayling: Is not the problem with buses not the commercial freedoms of the municipal companies, but the way in which the subsidy provided by the public sector for bus services is so heavily skewed in favour of certain parts of the country? In Surrey, bus services are disappearing while hundreds of buses are being put on to the roads every day, courtesy of the taxpayer, across the border in London. When will the Government provide a better balance between the funding allocated to London and the other major metropolitan areas and the surrounding rural and semi-rural areas that are losing bus services for want of money?

Tony McNulty: I commend the hon. Gentleman on his ingenuity in asking about how poor Surrey's buses are during a question on municipally owned bus companies. In the first instance, he should take up the case with Surrey county council, which, I believe, is neither Labour nor Liberal Democrat-controlled.

George Stevenson: Is not one of the problems with the better integration of bus services—whether municipal or privately owned—the attitude of the Competition Commission to matters such as the interchangeablility of fares and tickets? The Competition Commission seems to take the view that they may be anti-competitive, so bus companies and organisations cannot serve the public in the way that they want by making bus fares interchangeable.

Tony McNulty: I can happily tell my hon. Friend that he is just a tad behind the times. Last week, I had the great pleasure of launching the Solent travelcard, which involves some 14 bus companies working together, with interchangeable fares, in Portsmouth, Southampton and Hampshire, so that people can travel throughout that area without worrying about the confusion of whether they have the right bus ticket for each bus company. I hope that that, rather than what my hon. Friend describes, is a portent for the future.

Speed Cameras

Archie Norman: What plans he has to amend the guidelines for siting speed cameras.

David Jamieson: The safety camera partnerships have prepared their 2004–05 operational cases on the basis of the "Handbook of rules and guidelines for the operation of the national road safety camera programme", dated 31 October 2003, which includes the criteria for the sitting of cameras. The handbook is kept under review.

Archie Norman: Will the Minister acknowledge that, although several speed cameras in my constituency have a negligible bearing on safety, the guidelines prevent us from getting a speed camera in the worst accident blackspot in the area—on the A21 at Flimwell, where 11 fatalities and nearly 100 accidents have occurred in the past five years—because the police say that the speed limit cannot be reduced because the traffic goes too fast. We cannot get a speed camera in place exactly because the speed limit is too high. Will he acknowledge that the guidelines for speed limits and speed cameras need to be integrated, so that we can address the problem of the worst blackspots and remove those cameras that have no real bearing on safety?

David Jamieson: I note that the hon. Gentleman has called for a relaxation of the rules on the placing of cameras. That is certainly echoed by a number of authorities around the country that have written to us after we asked them at Christmas whether all their cameras met the criteria, and we will consider that. The police have a certain amount of discretion, but we will look at that. Of course he may want to have a discussion with the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Green)—the Conservative spokesman—who has a very different view on such matters.
	The hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman) says that some of the cameras in his constituency are ineffective. Before a camera was fitted at the A264 Langton road-Langton green junction in December 2000, there were 16 crashes and four people were killed or seriously injured. Since the camera was fitted, there have been two crashes and no one has been killed or seriously injured.

David Kidney: Does my hon. Friend accept that some people still do not get it? If we could reduce excessive and inappropriate speeds, we could reduce deaths and serious injuries on the roads. If education is the problem, could some more money from speed camera fines be used for education—specifically, for speed awareness courses?

David Jamieson: We have no such intention at the moment. The money from fines goes entirely towards maintaining cameras and ensuring that they are in the right places. I am sure that my hon. Friend has noted, as I have, that although I have asked the hon. Member for Ashford several times to tell us where the 4,000 cameras that are in the wrong places are, as yet we have heard nothing from him. I look forward to hearing him speak at the Dispatch Box today.

Gerald Howarth: Is the Minister aware that, despite the introduction of a large number of speed cameras in Hampshire, the fact is that fatalities in Hampshire have risen over the past two years? Is he aware that a representative of our safety camera partnership—I think that that is a misnomer in any case—is reported as saying:
	"Where we've put cameras, we've had a reduction in casualties . . . Deaths might have gone up on other parts of the road. I don't know what happens away from our cameras"?
	Is not that kind of view doing a great disservice to road safety policy? Surely road safety is a question not only of cameras, but of routine policing as well?

David Jamieson: First, the Hampshire partnership informed us that its cameras were in places that met the Department's criteria. Secondly, I suggest that the hon. Gentleman talk to his partnership to find out what has happened on accident reduction in places where cameras have been sited. If he is saying that there are more casualties in his area, he may be arguing for more road safety features, which might include more cameras. He might want to have discussions with the hon. Member for Ashford, who I notice is silent on this matter and seems to have given up on providing the evidence that he says exists to show that 4,000 cameras are in the wrong places.

John Mann: If anyone can identify one of the useless cameras that is not working, I will do them a deal. I will swap them the road humps that I still have in Warsop in my constituency for a speed camera. I have a whole series of constituents who want speed cameras. If a community wants a speed camera, should it not be able to decide that through a ballot in a referendum instead of being fobbed off with useless excuses about why it cannot have one?

David Jamieson: I know my hon. Friend's views on road humps, and I think that he would agree that finding appropriate measures in a specific area is what reduces the speed of traffic. I know that his view is shared on a cross-party basis because we have received a letter from West Sussex county council, which says of cameras
	"However their activities are somewhat constrained through the strict rules on where cameras can be deployed. I receive many requests from parish councils and others for more flexibility on this issue."
	The letter is signed by Lieutenant-Colonel Tex Pemberton, OBE, who, I believe, is a Conservative councillor on the council.

Damian Green: I am always willing to meet popular demand.
	The Minister will be aware that when he solemnly announced last week that every single speed camera was in exactly the right place—based on evidence provided by the speed camera partnerships that put them where they were in the first place—he simply made himself look ridiculous. He keeps asking for examples of wrongly placed speed cameras, so I invite him to talk to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, who has just removed hundreds of cameras because they were in the wrong position. What does the Minister say to the Automobile Association, which says:
	"No partnerships are going to say cameras need to be taken down because they would risk not being able to cover their costs . . . In fact the pressure is on them to keep putting up more cameras just to pay for the ever-rising numbers of staff"?
	Does the Minister agree with the AA and us that we need a proper independent audit of the cameras to ensure that each one is helping road safety and not just making money for bureaucrats and the Government?

David Jamieson: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman got to his feet, although I do not think that he had intended to do so before I challenged him. First, the Metropolitan police have quite properly reviewed their cameras, as we asked all partnerships to do. The letter that we received from the London partnership told us that all its cameras were in places that met the criteria. The hon. Gentleman is essentially saying that the criteria should be altered or adjusted. He still has not substantiated the comments that he made to the media around Christmas and new year saying that most of the cameras were in inappropriate places. That is not shown by evidence from councils because I have letters from all the partnerships—if he wants to have a look at them, they are from Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat councils and from chief constables. If he wants to say that cameras are in inappropriate places, he should come before the House with evidence, but so far, he has failed to do so.

Damian Green: The Minister appears to be deaf, as I have just pointed out that the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis said that he wants to remove hundreds of cameras. He may wish to treat the commissioner with contempt, so let us see how he reacts to the chief constable of Durham, a county with a very good road safety record, who writes that the cameras catch vehicles exceeding the speed limit in only 3 to 4 per cent of collisions. He also says—significantly, this is the issue that the Minister consistently ignores—that unlike many police forces Durham has
	"not reduced the number of road policing officers".
	Is that not the key? The Minister wants more cameras and fewer traffic police, but we want to keep the traffic police and put cameras only where they are needed. Does he agree that it is time to change his policy, which is damaging relations between the police and the general public, and is emphatically not the best way to make our roads safer?

David Jamieson: In the case of Durham, I had asked for an explanation of the reason why casualties had gone up, whereas they have gone down in many neighbouring authorities. The hon. Gentleman has still not dealt with the main point. He has backed off from talking about those 4,000 sites, and I believe that he ought to withdraw that comment. I have received comments from the partnerships, many of which cover areas represented by his party, including his own partnership in Kent. It referred to his remarks in the press and said:
	"When is the non-sense that is regularly promoted in the national media going to be proactively countered?"
	I urge the hon. Gentleman to counter that impression. He does not have a policy but a posture. He will remain in opposition with those arguments and we will remain in government until he learns that he is not practising opposition but opportunism.

Andrew Miller: Could the Minister tell the House how many motorists who keep within the law when passing speed cameras are prosecuted? Is it not time that we strengthened the guidelines so that the safety partnerships can consider any site where there has been a personal injury? Should we not give priority to consideration of the families of people who die or are seriously injured on our roads?

David Jamieson: That is the point. The policy is not about catching people or raising money but about reducing death and injury on our roads. It has been manifestly shown that, where cameras are sited, there is on average a 35 per cent. reduction in the number of people killed and seriously injured on the road. My hon. Friend makes a good point—people who stick to the law and stay within the speed limit are driving safely. The vast majority of motorists do so, and they are not fined.

Railways

Paul Burstow: What steps are being taken to reduce costs in the railway industry; and if he will make a statement.

John Barrett: If he will make a statement on the steps being taken to reduce costs within the railway industry.

Kim Howells: Controlling costs is a key challenge facing the railways, and both the Government and the Office of the Rail Regulator have made that clear to rail companies. Over the past eight months or so, considerable progress has been made on getting a grip on costs and delivering greater efficiency, and the rail review is examining what can be done to accelerate that.

Paul Burstow: Is it not time to have a look at the profits made by rolling stock companies and the charges that they impose on train operating companies for the hire of railway equipment? Is it right that £144,000 a year is paid for a two-coach Pacer, when it originally cost £350,000 to build and lasts for 20 years? Is it not time to include ROSCOs—the rolling stock companies—in the remit of the regulator so that their costs and the proportion of costs that they pass on to train operating companies and ultimately the taxpayer can also be looked at?

Kim Howells: That is a good question, and it is certainly addressed in the rail review. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that, over the past seven years, ROSCOs have invested more than £4 billion in new rolling stock, and 4,000 carriages—about a third of the total UK fleet—have been replaced. We are interested in considering charges and profit margins to see how it might be possible to get better value out of our railways in general.

John Barrett: Will the Minister confirm that, in attempting to cut costs in the railway industry, safety will never be compromised, so that events such as Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield and Potters Bar will never happen again?

Kim Howells: Yes. I appreciate the logic of the hon. Gentleman's question, but I find it curious, since the ethos of the railways has always been safety first, and it continues to be so. We should not be risk-averse as a society. There will always be risks involved in running the railways; we have to cut those risks down to an absolute minimum. The railway authorities are trying to do precisely that.

Clive Efford: On costs, will my hon. Friend look into the upgrade of the electricity supply on network south-east to ensure that we are getting value for money? I have been advised by the Strategic Rail Authority that even once the electricity supply is upgraded, we will not be able to run 12-car trains across the entire network throughout peak periods. If we do not plan for the long-term future, we may soon find ourselves unable to run longer trains or meet capacity needs. I urge him to look into that matter.

Kim Howells: I will certainly look into it, although I have not heard the report myself. The absurdity of having leased and ordered huge amounts of new rolling stock without realising that it could not be run on the southern region because the electricity supply was not up to it has become a famous misdemeanour in the administration of the railways. We are spending £1 billion on upgrading the power supply to the southern region in the belief that it will enable us to run new and longer trains that will serve customers better.

Lawrie Quinn: Does my hon. Friend welcome the Strategic Rail Authority's recent announcement of its review of community rail partnerships such as that in my constituency between Whitby and Middlesbrough? Does he agree that that will drive down costs on the railways by re-establishing the important link between local communities and the railway industry?

Kim Howells: Yes, I do. There are opportunities for all kinds of imaginative ways of running the railways better. Often, local circumstances dictate how best the railway should be run in that area, and a great deal can be done to tap the creative potential that is there to provide better service for customers.

John Thurso: Does the Minister agree that the amount of cost mismanagement on the rail system demonstrates incompetence on a monumental scale, especially as the number of bureaucrats involved in supervising and regulating the industry has increased fivefold in the past decade and the amount spent on consultants has tripled in one year? Who among all those bureaucrats and consultants is responsible for proper cost controls and internal audit? Is it the Strategic Railway Authority, Network Rail, the rail regulator or, ultimately, the Government? Where does the buck stop?

Kim Howells: As the hon. Gentleman knows, the industry is administered in far too complex a way. There are too many chiefs, and the lines of command are too long and need to be shortened. We must be able to make decisions—very often, vital decisions—much more quickly to produce a better railway. The Office of the Rail Regulator has identified £5 billion-worth of savings. However, the hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the confusion that exists. When I came into this job last July, the cost of the west coast mainline upgrade was about £14 billion. It began at £2 billion, and is now down to about £7.5 billion. Those cost predictions are flexible, by any standards. We are getting a grip on the situation, but that should have happened long before last summer.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: My hon. Friend knows that Network Rail tries hard to get control over costs and it should be encouraged to do that. However, there is still too much fragmentation. Will he ensure that Network Rail has access to a sensible set of costs and that contractors are told that the days of fleecing the taxpayer are over?

Kim Howells: Yes. Network Rail's decision to take maintenance contracts in-house is a good start that will probably save the taxpayer approximately £300 million a year. More important, it will get the work done more efficiently and probably to higher standards. That is good news for those who use the railways and will lead to building up a skills base in Network Rail. That will be useful to the organisation in future.

Christopher Chope: Is the Minister thereby apologising for the fact that since 1997, the cost of providing our railways has trebled? Does he agree with this week's report from Transport 2000 that much of the extra money
	"has been wasted on inefficiencies and incompetence at every turn"?

Kim Howells: We have discussed the matter several times and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, who is generous, will admit that we inherited a ramshackle vehicle in the form of Railtrack and a system that was fatally flawed. We are trying to create a much better railway system. That will take some doing because he was right about the grave flaws, some of which continue to exist. We have tried to tackle them in the past seven years but there is no question that we have not been entirely successful. If that sounds like an apology, I hope that he will accept it.

Ann Cryer: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall call the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) again.

Christopher Chope: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have two goes today.
	Does the Minister accept that the reason for the delay in publishing the National Audit Office report, which is out today, is the huge scale and gravity of the waste of taxpayers' money that it has uncovered? Does he further accept that it is time for the Government to learn the lesson, "Waste not, want not"? Is not it apparent from his previous answer that the Government inherited railway costs that are one third of current costs?

Kim Howells: It is true that costs were one third of current costs. They have increased by so much because there had been no investment in the railways before we took them over. That was proved when the terrible accident occurred at Hatfield, and Railtrack—the company that the Conservative Government set up—had no idea of its asset base. When we began to realise the number of broken rails and the extent of repair that was needed to the infrastructure, we understood that the railways needed investment. The Government are doing precisely that for the first time in 30 years.

Ann Cryer: The economy is booming, especially in cities such as Leeds, which acts as a magnet and draws in an ever increasing number of commuters from areas such as mine. Does my hon. Friend agree that, while we need to cut the profits of the ROSCOs, which were a result of privatisation, we should try to run more trains and strengthen provision for people such as those in my constituency who use the Airedale and Wharfedale lines?

Kim Howells: I am sure that we could run more trains on the Airedale and Wharfedale line. Last week, I had the privilege of visiting Japan, where rail infrastructure is 25 per cent. greater than ours. It has 20,000 km of track whereas we have 16,000 km. Last year, the railways in this country carried 1 billion passengers—the highest number since 1961—but the Japanese carried 21.7 billion. We ought to be able to squeeze much more capacity out of our railways. We have much to learn from the Japanese and we had better start learning it.

Airports

Mark Prisk: What plans his Department has to review the cross-subsidy of airports in the south-east.

Tony McNulty: The Government have no such plans.

Mark Prisk: Many airlines at Heathrow and Gatwick strongly oppose the idea of cross-subsidising a runway at Stansted. They would not benefit from that, and it would serve their competitors. Given that opposition, what assurances has the Minister received from BAA that it will be able to fund the whole scheme, including road and rail access?

Tony McNulty: The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do exactly what is in the White Paper, where we clearly say that the Government will not promote or pay for the development of Stansted. We expect BAA to bring forward plans for the development of new capacity at Stansted in a way that is responsive to market needs, and to provide the necessary funding. We fully recognise the independence of the Civil Aviation Authority and its role in regulating the sector, and the Government expect the CAA and BAA to secure an appropriate framework to bring the development to fruition.

Graham Stringer: Is not the best way to deal with the cross-subsidy issue to follow the advice of the Select Committee on Transport, and break up BAA? That would not only deal with cross-subsidies but remove something that has been a great barrier to providing runway infrastructure in the south-east for the past 60 years.

Tony McNulty: The CAA has made it clear that its policy of regulating each airport on an individual, stand-alone basis was introduced earlier last year, after consultation, to underpin commercial disciplines for airport development. The CAA has no plans to consult on that again. That would remain the reality, regardless of who owned the airports in the south-east.

Edward Garnier: The expansion of Stansted airport is of great local interest, as is the expansion of East Midlands airport. When will the Minister respond to my e-mails and rearrange the cancelled meeting on that?

Tony McNulty: The hon. and learned Gentleman should be very clear today, although he was not at the business statement, that that meeting, which was called not by his good self but by another east midlands Member, was duly cancelled by that Member. The hon. and learned Gentleman's notion that my office cancelled it is erroneous. I am more than happy to have that meeting, which was to discuss the change of name at East Midlands airport, and any subsequent meetings, and I shall answer his e-mail in due course.

Trams

Michael Jack: If he will make a statement on his Department's policy on tramway refurbishment.

Kim Howells: Tramway refurbishment is a matter for the local authorities or the private concessionaire.

Michael Jack: I am grateful to the Minister for his useful and illuminating answer. He knows Blackpool well, and he knows the support that the hon. Members for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) and for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) and I have given to Blackpool borough council's application for assistance in the refurbishment of its tramway. The Minister also knows the importance of that project to the whole Fylde coast transport infrastructure, and he will appreciate that it is the key to further evaluation of possible light rail developments to Preston and beyond. In the light of those points, when is his Department likely to make up its mind on giving support to Blackpool? Does he recognise the importance of keeping the existing tramway infrastructure in good condition?

Kim Howells: It is important to keep the existing tramway system in good condition, and I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that the Department's decision on the bid will be made in the context of the wider transport programme. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will endeavour to make an announcement shortly.

Clive Betts: In considering future investment in trams, the Minister might like to reflect on the success of the Sheffield supertram, which carries 12 million passengers a year. I hope that he will consider favourably plans for its extension to Rotherham. Will he also reflect on the complete nonsense of bus deregulation, which means that we do not have integrated transport at local level because trams and buses do not run together, and that we do not have proper joined-up timetabling or through-ticketing? Does he agree that to receive the best return on investment in trams, we need to ensure that buses and trams are co-ordinated at local level and do not run in competition?

Kim Howells: I agree with my hon. Friend that, wherever possible, properly integrated transport systems for passengers should be constructed. That is not rocket science, but there is not a blueprint for one system that works better than all others. Transport systems need co-ordination and joint input, and local authorities, private companies and passengers' representatives should be able to get together to deliver just that.

Merchant Shipping

Alistair Carmichael: If he will make a statement on the level of piracy and armed attacks against UK flagged merchant ships.

David Jamieson: The number of piracy and armed attacks on United Kingdom flagged merchant vessels has risen from one or two a year in the mid-1990s to six in 2003. That is clearly unacceptable. Over the years, my Department, in partnership with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has launched a range of initiatives to raise the profile of the issue around the world. We continue to work with the United Nations General Assembly, the European Union, the International Maritime Organisation and the maritime industry on this issue.

Alistair Carmichael: I thank the Minister for that very helpful and comprehensive answer. He will be aware that the problem is particularly acute in Indonesian waters around the Malacca straits and Bintan island, where, last year alone, there were 121 reported incidents. Will he add his weight to the call by the National Union of Marine, Aviation and Shipping Transport Officers for the Royal Navy to provide protection for our merchant fleet in areas where there is a known danger?

David Jamieson: The incidents are fairly narrowly focused. Of the six incidents involving UK ships last year, two took place off Guyana, and the others took place off India, Vietnam, Cuba and Nigeria. I think that the hon. Gentleman would accept that they were therefore widely spaced around the world. I am pleased to say that no one was injured in any of them; the ships were all at anchor and the incidents mainly involved robbery. We are working closely with those countries, in particular, and with the IMO to try to rid the seas of this problem. Given its geographical spread, however, I am sure that he will appreciate that it would be almost impossible for the Royal Navy to make even a minor impact on such a situation. We are mindful of the problem, however, and I am aware of NUMAST's concerns. We take this issue very seriously.

Patrick Mercer: The Minister will be aware of how narrow the dividing line is between piracy, armed attacks and terrorism against shipping. What processes are in place to brief the merchant marine on the intelligence regarding the threat that faces it when travelling in such dangerous waters?

David Jamieson: The hon. Gentleman will of course know that we cannot discuss in the House matters of security or of how we pass on such information in this context. He will probably be aware, however, that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency has made available to all UK flagged ships clear guidelines on how they should react in these circumstances. The United Kingdom also played a major part in drawing up the IMO's code of practice for ships. Furthermore, much of the work that we are doing internationally on port security also relates to maritime security. There is therefore a lot going on in this area, and there are a great many concerns. We are addressing these problems and taking a lead in the world on ensuring that we solve them.

School Transport

Simon Thomas: What steps he is taking to improve the safety of school transport.

David Jamieson: Buses, coaches and minibuses used for the transport of children to and from school are subject to safety standards, as are all passenger-carrying vehicles. Before such vehicles go into service, they are inspected and certified. After that, they are tested annually and can be subjected to random roadside checks. I am not aware of there being any particular problems with the safety of school buses.

Simon Thomas: I thank the Minister for that reply. He will know that in a rural area such as my own, the safety of children being transported on school buses is of the utmost importance to their parents. What opportunities will the new Bill being published on school transport provide to ensure that schoolchildren are taken on buses that are fully fitted with seat belts and that we get rid of the invidious three children to a seat rule?

David Jamieson: The safety of children on transport to school is absolutely paramount to us. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we have policies to encourage cycling, walking and, of course, the use of buses rather than cars. He will also be aware that seat belts have to be fitted for journeys that children take within the school day, but that does not always apply to buses. The issue of seat belts has not presented a major problem to us, but over a period of time seat belts will gradually come in, because buses are gradually being fitted with bucket seats rather than bench seats, which will overcome the problem of three children sitting in a seat for two. Even that has not presented itself as a problem, however. One of the biggest problems that we have found often involves not the state of the bus but the behaviour of the children.

John Smith: I know that my hon. Friend is aware of the tragic death of my constituent, Stuart Cunningham-Jones, on the way home from school. Does he have plans, however, to review the minimum standards, and the ludicrous three-for-two arrangement, in the light of the coroner's report and the recommendations by both the jury and the coroner in relation to that tragic death?

David Jamieson: I am aware of the tragic death of Stuart Cunningham-Jones. Now that we have seen the coroner's letter on the matter, we are considering his recommendations carefully. In his letter, he said that on this occasion seatbelts did not play a part in the tragedy, but he emphasises that the behaviour of the children on the bus was a major factor. Bus drivers who work the school run are receiving special training, and the Department for Education and Skills is also examining the issue. The draft Bill that was published yesterday will address not just issues relating to the use of buses but safety issues.

John Redwood: Given that most deaths and injuries on public service vehicles are caused by passengers being flung around in a crash, why does the Minister not simply say that all new buses and trains should have seatbelts fitted so that they match the standards of private cars? Our children would then be a lot safer.

David Jamieson: The rules, of course, are that all new coaches and minibuses must have seatbelts fitted. There is not an intention to fit seatbelts in buses on scheduled journeys, mainly travelling at slow speeds in urban areas, partly because it is totally impractical to do so. Generally, the problem is not in relation to buses that travel around city streets relatively slowly but in relation to higher speeds in other areas and on other roads. We are not complacent about the issue, however, and clearly, we will have to address it even more seriously in future.

Nottingham Express Transport System

Paddy Tipping: When he intends to visit Nottingham to travel on the Nottingham express transport system.

Tony McNulty: My hon. Friend's skill at tabling questions is unsurpassed, as he is both timely and prescient, given that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State visited Nottingham yesterday to open the Nottingham express transit line 1 and had the opportunity to meet local authority officials to discuss local transport issues and their successes in Nottingham.

Paddy Tipping: Clearly, the Secretary of State is ahead of the time, given that fee-paying passengers were not able to use the tram until 5.58 this morning. The Minister will be aware that the local authorities, Nottingham city council and Nottinghamshire county council, have worked for many years to open line 1, and want to create a network—lines 2 and 3. Will the Department work closely with the local authorities to ensure that we have a network to meet customer needs across Nottinghamshire?

Tony McNulty: My hon. Friend will know that we expect the first line to attract an estimated 11 million-plus passengers and to be a real boon to Nottingham, not simply in transport terms but as a catalyst for regeneration. We always work closely with local authorities as and when they determine plans for future additions to networks, and we look forward to receiving Nottingham's subsequent plans eventually. Nottingham will base that on a very strong record in terms of local transport planning, in both county and city, which is to be commended.

Alan Simpson: Having been at the launch with the Secretary of State yesterday, may I say for the record what an elegant figure he cut? It was almost as stylish and sophisticated as the trams. People at the launch were almost as complimentary about the Secretary of State as they were about my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping), who was at the initial meeting 15 or 16 years ago that started the process of establishing line 1.
	May I repeat the requests of my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood? The excitement yesterday was that Nottingham Members wanted the Secretary to State to be able to travel from Bulwell in the north of Nottingham to Clifton in the south of Nottingham. To do that, however, the second or third line would have to be in place. Will the Minister assure us that it will not take another 16 years to get lines 2 and 3?

Tony McNulty: My hon. Friend will appreciate that for 10 of those 16 years the matter was in another party's hands. I expect any analysis of the bids as and when they are received to be done swiftly. The important point is that, following all that has been done so far by the authorities, both city and council, there has been a significant increase in public transport patronage. We want that to continue in a broader context.

Airports

Alan Reid: If he will make a statement on his Department's policy regarding who pays for the cost of security at small airports.

Tony McNulty: Government policy is that the aviation industry should cover all its operating costs, including those incurred in the implementation of security requirements. It is free to choose how to comply with the standards required, and how it wishes to pass the costs on to its customers.

Alan Reid: May I draw the Minister's attention to the impact of the policy in the highlands and islands? In April, passengers for Tiree will be forced to pay a £20 surcharge, and those for Campbeltown will have to pay £12. Those extra charges will have a devastating effect on the economies of small islands and remote communities on the mainland. Will the Government reconsider the policy, and cover the cost of security at small airports? It could be funded from air passenger duty. The cost of security could be spread across all air passengers, rather than the brunt being borne by those using small, remote airports.

Tony McNulty: We do not want an aircraft travelling from Barra, Campbeltown or Tiree to a major city airport such as Glasgow to be subject to less security than an aircraft operating from any other UK airport. We propose, however, to introduce a regime tailored for smaller and lighter aircraft and the airports from which they operate, commensurate with the nature of such operations and the risk that they pose. We shall consult the industry shortly. We simply cannot compromise on security, although I take the hon. Gentleman's point, which is a fair one.

Crossrail

Nigel Beard: If he will make a statement on the importance of Crossrail to (a) London businesses and (b) the development of the Thames gateway.

Tony McNulty: All those issues were covered in Cross London Rail Links Ltd.'s Crossrail business case, the recent review of which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is considering. He will make an announcement on the future of the business case in due course.

Nigel Beard: Does my hon. Friend agree that Crossrail's impact on the Thames gateway depends on the continuation of the line from the Isle of Dogs to the channel tunnel rail link at Ebbsfleet via the south bank? Does not the realisation of that potential in turn depend on confidence among private investors that the line will be built according to a credible timetable?

Tony McNulty: As my hon. Friend will know, the Government said last July that, in principle, Crossrail would be a very good thing for London and its transport network. I trust that he will forgive me for not going into detail about specific parts of specific lines, given that I received the Montague report only about two weeks ago. It is currently being analysed, and a report is soon to be produced.

Diane Abbott: Does my hon. Friend agree that the long-awaited Crossrail project is vital to the regeneration of the east end? Many people in London are waiting for a positive sign from the Government.

Tony McNulty: As the Government said last summer, Crossrail is indeed an important project for London, but we must not put all our eggs in one basket. We must give due weight to the myriad transport and other schemes that are already regenerating east London. East London, and its regeneration, need not wait for the green light to be given for Crossrail.

Railways

Anne McIntosh: If he will make a statement on the administration of the infrastructure of the rural railway network.

Kim Howells: Responsibility for the infrastructure of the rural railway network rests with Network Rail.

Anne McIntosh: I am grateful for that full reply. Will the Minister comment on the Strategic Rail Authority's consultation document, and in particular on the alarming implication that local authorities such as North Yorkshire county council may have to pay for some rural railway networks in future? Will he also confirm that the rolling stock that is to be passed to voluntary groups and local authorities will be in the best possible state, and that the speed limit that is set will ensure that the structure will not be inferior to other parts of the network?

Kim Howells: As the hon. Lady knows, the document that the Strategic Rail Authority has published is a consultation document. I should remind her that, in general, community rail lines are typically local or rural in character, have a speed limit of 75 mph or less, run a service that is of an hourly or lesser frequency, and have a single operator or one franchise operator plus freight, so there is a lot of leeway. This is not about closures or loading new costs on to local authorities, but it certainly is about trying to tap the existing potential for perhaps running some community railways better.

CABINET OFFICE

The Minister for the Cabinet Office was asked—

Public Appointments

Bill Tynan: What steps the Government take to ensure that people appointed to public bodies are representative of the society they serve.

Douglas Alexander: The Government want boards of public bodies to be both appointed on merit and representative of society as a whole. On 17 December 2003, we published "Delivering Diversity in Public Appointments 2003". This document explains the action being taken across government to increase diversity on the boards of our public bodies, and the targets that Departments have set for 2006.

Bill Tynan: I thank my hon. Friend for that response. Given that the Government rightly believe that the best decisions are taken by boards that best reflect local society, will he agree to add to the seven Nolan principles a further committed principle for the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments: that public bodies should reflect local communities and society in general?

Douglas Alexander: I know of my hon. Friend's considerable interest in this matter. The Government acknowledged the importance of the Nolan principles of public life when they were published. Of course, they were produced by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which was established at that time. Its work continues under Sir Nigel Wicks, and I shall certainly consider whether this matter would be better directed towards it. I should none the less add that we are keen to encourage people to involve themselves in public bodies at a local level in the first instance. That is why, for example, such work has been taken forward in relation to school boards.

Oliver Heald: As the Minister's reply to me of 3 March shows, the number of appointments and reappointments to public bodies over the past three years demonstrates that four times as many Labour party appointments have been made as Conservative—or, indeed, Liberal Democrat—ones. This Government now wish to impose that system on judges. Can we expect similar results, and is that another reason why the Government are so frightened of the Constitutional Reform Bill being sent to a Select Committee of the House of Lords for proper scrutiny?

Douglas Alexander: That seems a good effort, but it is important to start with some of the facts. More than 80 per cent. of those appointed to public bodies over the past five years were not themselves politically active. When a Labour Government are in power, it is only natural that a number of Labour supporters are keen to offer themselves for appointment to public bodies. But as I said, it is important that decisions be made on the basis of merit, and we want public bodies to be representative of society as a whole. In that regard, the hon. Gentleman might do better to direct his attention towards the supporters of other political parties, and to encourage them to participate in public bodies.

Tony Wright: Is my hon. Friend aware of the innovation of the lottery boards? They have found new members by a process of lot, or random selection, which has led to the appointment of people who would not otherwise have been found for these posts. Will he embrace this innovation and encourage other public bodies to see how it could be developed?

David Winnick: For judges?

Douglas Alexander: As the sedentary comment of my hon. Friend suggests, one has to be careful about the question of the particular public bodies that adopt this approach. It is clear that we are looking for a high level of expertise for certain public bodies, so although I am interested in the example that my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright) cites, we need to consider the capabilities of those offering themselves for service, rather than simply making a random selection.

Civil Service

Wayne David: If he will make a statement on measures to improve occupational health in the civil service.

Douglas Alexander: The Cabinet Office works with Departments to promote a consistent approach to managing health in the civil service. It will continue to advise and monitor that area by collecting information on absence rates, facilitating the sharing of good practice and promoting the importance of occupational health in the workplace.

Wayne David: Have any comparisons been made of absenteeism due to sickness in the civil service compared with the private sector?

Douglas Alexander: Finding statistics to make direct comparisons between the public and private sectors is difficult, but I understand that in some private sectors—such as manufacturing and production—sickness rates are similar to those experienced in the civil service.

John Randall: Are there any specific measures to prevent memory loss among civil servants? If so, could they be extended to Ministers of the Crown?

Douglas Alexander: I am tempted to reply that I have forgotten whether such arrangements are in place. I am unaware of any specifics but if there are, I shall be happy to write to the hon. Gentleman.

David Taylor: What initiatives are planned to assist people with disabilities to use their talents by seeking civil service careers.

Douglas Alexander: The Cabinet Office undertakes a range of activities to encourage people with disabilities to apply to the civil service and to increase the proportion of disabled people in the senior civil service. The summer placement scheme encourages people with disabilities to apply for the graduate fast-stream programme. The civil service also participates in Workstep—a Department for Work and Pensions initiative to help disabled people progress into mainstream employment where appropriate.

David Taylor: Even though the number of disabled persons entering the summer scheme might be relatively modest, that initiative will help to dispel discriminatory attitudes and practices in Departments, as well as giving graduates fast-stream access to more senior jobs. Can my hon. Friend confirm that it remains a central objective dramatically to increase the number of civil servants with disabilities in senior posts from the low level that this Government inherited in 1997? What progress has been made in the intervening seven years?

Douglas Alexander: We are determined to increase the number of disabled senior civil servants serving the country, but recognise that there is more work to be done. I particularly welcome the summer placement scheme, which ensures that the key fast-stream route into the senior civil service takes forward our work in relation to diversity.

Richard Allan: Constituents of mine report that the problem is less one of getting into the civil service and more one of barriers to progress within it. Is there monitoring of grading and promotions, to ensure that there is no discrimination against disabled people seeking to advance their careers?

Douglas Alexander: Discrimination has no place in the civil service as a whole or the senior civil service. By definition, those entering senior posts have been promoted from the ranks of the civil service. I am keen to see continued and heightened progress in meeting the challenge of increasing the number of disabled people in the senior civil service in particular.

Julie Morgan: What plans he has to open up civil service jobs to external applications.

Douglas Alexander: Within the framework laid down by the Civil Service Order in Council 1995 and the recruitment code issued by the civil service commissioners, Departments and agencies have the authority to determine their own practices and procedures for the recruitment of staff to the home civil service—including whether to open posts up to external competition.

Julie Morgan: Does my hon. Friend agree that, if even more jobs were open to external advertisement, the civil service would be much more likely to reflect society and have a more diverse workforce?

Douglas Alexander: My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. The number of open competitions has increased and I am determined that—as the Prime Minister made clear in a recent speech—the service should be capable not just of offering expert policy advice but of assisting government in the delivery of policies.

Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration

Brian White: What plans he has to bring forward proposals to reform the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration.

Douglas Alexander: The Government's position remains as set out in their response to the report of the Public Administration Committee on ombudsman issues. We are working with the parliamentary ombudsman and others in the ombudsman community to promote joint working and to ensure that arrangements are fit for purpose. I am grateful for my hon. Friend's contribution to the work of that important Select Committee.

Brian White: Does my hon. Friend accept that one of the best ways to improve the ombudsman service is to remove the Members of Parliaments filter? Can he give an indication of when that is likely to happen?

Douglas Alexander: That is one of the issues on which we are in discussion with the ombudsman at present. Under present arrangements, MPs certainly play an important role in channelling complaints through the ombudsman, but I understand that there is a range of opinions throughout the House on this important matter. The discussions will continue.

E-government

Tom Brake: If he will make a statement on the progress of e-government initiatives within the Department for Transport.

Douglas Alexander: The Cabinet Office is responsible for leading and supporting e-transformation in government. Within that, the office of the e-envoy is working to improve the delivery of public services and achieve long-term savings by joining up online Government services around the needs of customers. Progress on specific e-government initiatives at the Department for Transport is, however, a matter for Ministers in that Department. They will be able to confirm that specific initiatives are being developed in respect of transport.

Tom Brake: Can the Minister comment on whether he believes that the Department for Transport is making a success of the vehicle registration system, and whether the level of failures in that system is acceptable?

Douglas Alexander: I will, of course, be happy to pass on the hon. Gentleman's comments directly to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport. As I understand it, full capability for the electronic first registration of all vehicles now exists, with a take-up of more than 75 per cent.

GM Policy

Margaret Beckett: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the Government's approach to the technology of genetic modification, including its use in crops. The tool of GM has been used for at least 10 years across the world in the production of food and medicines, both human and animal.
	In the UK, only a handful of foods have been approved for use—GM soya, tomato puree and some forms of maize. The first two were approved under the previous Administration and the maize in 1997–98. At present, no GM crop has all the approvals needed for commercial cultivation in the UK.
	Decisions as to what can be consumed or grown in the EU as a whole have throughout been taken by member states collectively under a regime of safety testing, monitoring and control, which itself dates back 10 years. That legal framework has recently been substantially strengthened, and a much-strengthened regulatory regime came into effect in the UK last year. It is firmly based on the precautionary principle and applied on a strictly case-by-case basis. Every genetically modified organism for which authorisation is sought must receive a comprehensive prior assessment of any potential risk to human health or the environment.
	In 1998 the Government decided to go further. We were advised by English Nature of its concern about the effect of current GM herbicide-resistant crops on biodiversity. It was agreed that farm-scale trials would be conducted to assess those risks. Those trials were largely completed and reported by the end of last year, and the results were referred to our independent advisory committee for its assessment.
	In the meantime, another advisory committee had advised the Government to fund an independently run public debate or dialogue on GM issues. I accepted that advice and announced in May 2002 that the Government and the devolved Administrations would sponsor such a dialogue with three strands: the debate itself, a thorough review of the science, and an economic cost-and-benefit study by the Prime Minister's strategy unit.
	The public dialogue reported general unease about GM crops and food, and little support for the early commercialisation of GM crops. People already engaged with the issues were generally much more hostile. Those not so engaged were more open-minded, anxious to know more, but still very cautious; and it was suggested that, as they learned more, their hostility deepened.
	The cost-and-benefit study concluded that the currently available GM crops offer only some small and limited benefits to UK farmers, but that future developments in GM crops could potentially offer benefits of greater value and significance, even in the UK. The science review concluded that GM is not a single homogeneous technology and that applications should continue to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. It reaffirmed that there were some gaps in scientific knowledge and, in particular, that it was important to keep the regulatory system under review so that it kept pace with any new developments. It concluded, however, that there was no scientific case for ruling out all GM crops or products.
	The review examined all the concerns generally raised. In particular, it reported no verifiable ill effects from extensive human and animal consumption of products from GM crops over seven years, and it concluded too that current GM crops were very unlikely either to invade the countryside or be toxic to wildlife. The most important environmental issue identified was the effect on farmland wildlife, which was the subject of our extensive trials—the largest carried out in the world.
	Our independent advisers have now reported to us on these trials. On the basis of that advice, and having consulted the devolved Administrations, I have concluded that the UK should oppose the commercial cultivation of the relevant varieties of GM beet and oilseed rape anywhere in the EU using the management regime tested in the farm-scale evaluations. However, I have also concluded that we should agree in principle to the commercial cultivation of GM herbicide-tolerant maize, but only subject to two further important conditions.
	The first condition is that restrictions should be imposed on the existing EU marketing consent that expires in October 2006, so that it can only be grown and managed as in the trials, or under such conditions as will not result in adverse effects on the environment. The second condition, which responds to concerns that have been raised about the phasing out of atrazine in the EU, is that the consent holders should be required to carry out further scientific analysis to monitor changes in herbicide use on conventional maize, and also to submit new evidence if they seek to renew the existing EU marketing consent when it expires in 2006.
	Before commercial cultivation of GM maize can proceed, separate approval will also be required under seeds legislation, and also under pesticides legislation for the associated herbicide use. Chardon LL will not be added to the UK national list of seeds until the necessary amendments to the EU marketing consent are in place. We also anticipate that co-existence measures will be in place before any GM crops are grown commercially. I do not in fact anticipate any commercial cultivation of GM maize before spring 2005, at the earliest.
	The farm-scale evaluations also raised much more far-reaching questions about crop management and the environment. Incidentally, those questions reinforce the value of the case-by-case approach. The evaluations showed that there was no blanket difference between GM and non-GM crops. The trial crop with the "best" results for the environment was a conventional crop. The crop that was "worst" was also a conventional crop, yet we have nothing like the influence over the growing and management of conventional crops that we have over GM crops, even though the effects may be just as far-reaching. We are giving careful consideration to these issues.
	I believe that the approach that I have outlined today is the right one. It is precautionary and evidence-based. In practice, it means licensing one application, which runs till October 2006 and is subject to two further conditions.
	Apart from the scientific decisions that flow from the trials, there is the related issue of GM and non-GM crops being grown in the same area—so-called co-existence. The Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission has recently produced advice on this issue.
	I propose that, as the AEBC advises, farmers who wish to grow GM crops should be required to comply with a code of practice based on the EU's 0.9 per cent. labelling threshold, and that this code should have statutory backing.
	There are particular concerns, of course, for organic farming, for which the Government have much increased funding, and to which we remain committed. The AEBC argued for a lower threshold for organic farming, but could not agree on a figure. We will explore further with stakeholders whether a lower threshold should be applied on a crop-by-crop basis.
	I will also consult stakeholders on options for providing compensation to non-GM farmers who suffer financial loss through no fault of their own. However, I must make it clear that any such compensation scheme would need to be funded by the GM sector itself, rather than by Government or producers of non-GM crops. The Government will also provide guidance to farmers interested in establishing voluntary GM-free zones in their areas, consistent with EU legislation.
	This is a difficult issue, bedevilled by confusion. There are many legitimate concerns—about gene stacking, cross-pollination and much else—but reports that combine comment on all these matters can be misleading. People worry that a GM crop could affect wild relatives and hence the gene pool. Maize—the crop that we are prepared to license—has no wild relatives in the UK. It is highly unlikely that any stray remaining plant or seed would survive a winter here and thus cause concern about a subsequent crop. Equally, very little organic maize is grown here, so many of the concerns usually raised do not apply. That reinforces the value of a case-by-case approach. Some GM crops are already used for animal feed, although they are not grown here. Several GM veterinary medicines are also in use and much vegetarian cheese is produced using a GM processing aid.
	There is no scientific case for a blanket approval of all the uses of GM. Safety, human health and the environment must remain at the heart of our regulatory regime, and rigorous and robust monitoring must be maintained. Equally, there is no scientific case for a blanket ban on the use of GM. I know of no one who argues, for instance, that the GM tool alone can solve the problems of the developing world. However, it is less than honest to pretend, especially against a background of climate change, that GM does not have the potential to contribute to some solutions.
	That, too, was part of the outcome of the public dialogue. I thank those who ran it and those who took part. From that process and many other attempts to assess public opinion, it is clear that most people believe that genetic modification should be approached with caution. They want strong regulation and monitoring; farmers want a framework of rules for the co-existence of GM and non-GM crops; and customers want a clear regime for traceability and labelling so that they can make their own choices. The rules that we now have and those that we shall put in place in the months ahead meet the criteria as well as being soundly based on the scientific evidence, and I commend our approach to the House.

John Whittingdale: I begin by thanking the Secretary of State for coming to the House to make this statement and also for giving me advance sight of it.
	The statement itself is not a surprise. Indeed, it confirms the decision made nearly a month ago in the Cabinet sub-committee, the minutes of which were then leaked. At that time, it was reported that the Government would announce their decision the following week. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the reason why the decision was not announced was that, in the words of the Cabinet sub-committee minutes, the Government have been trying to
	"prepare the ground with key MPs, particularly those with an interest in science or food security"?
	Will the Secretary of State accept that one group of key MPs are the members of the Environmental Audit Committee? Will she explain why the Cabinet approved the growing of GMHT forage maize 24 hours before the Committee unanimously recommended that it should not do so? Is it not extraordinary to dismiss a Select Committee's recommendations before even having had a chance to read them?
	Will the Secretary of State accept that the Environmental Audit Committee has raised some serious concerns about the validity of the farm-scale evaluations? In particular, does she agree that the findings of the GMHT forage maize trials were based on a wholly invalid comparison? Will she accept that, in the words of English Nature, atrazine turns a maize field into a wildlife desert? That is why atrazine is to be phased out and why it is not that surprising that any herbicide regime that does not use atrazine is likely to be preferable. The Government should conduct new trials to compare the effect of GMHT forage maize with its non-GM equivalent grown without the use of atrazine. The few trials that did take place were on too small a scale to produce conclusive results.
	The Secretary of State knows that results have been published for only three of the four crops trialled. Can she say when the Government intend to publish the results for the winter-sown oilseed rape trials? Can she also say what work is being done to examine the cultivation of GM crops in north America? Will she accept that the experience there has been that, over time, the use of herbicides on GM crops has had to increase as herbicide-resistant weeds have developed? Does that not suggest that the trials in this country should have been longer, and can she explain why that evidence appears to have been ignored by the Government in reaching their decision?
	We welcome the Government's recognition that there needs to be a clear framework governing separation distances and liability before plantings take place. In considering those issues, will she also take account of the north American experience, which has seen up to two thirds of all seeds contaminated by GM genes?
	It has been suggested that legislation may well be needed to establish the rules. The private Member's Bill, the Genetically Modified Organisms (Contamination and Liability) Bill, being introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) aims to do precisely that. Will the Government, therefore, take advantage of the Bill, which provides an opportunity to debate the necessary safeguards against contamination that we all want to see?
	Is the right hon. Lady aware that, despite the Government's decision, more than 40 regions in Britain—including Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and the Lake district—have indicated their wish to declare themselves GM-free? Will the Government provide advice to these authorities on the establishment of voluntary GM-free zones?
	Can the right hon. Lady confirm that both the Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly have decided that no GM maize planting should take place for the foreseeable future, and say how she intends to obtain their agreement to the inclusion of GM maize on the national list?
	Finally, the Cabinet sub-committee apparently noted that
	"The public is unlikely to be receptive to this decision."
	Is that not a masterly understatement? The Government's own national GM debate showed that 90 per cent. of the public opposed the commercial cultivation of GM crops. What was the point of having that debate if the Government now ignore the opinions of the overwhelming majority? Does the right hon. Lady accept that until that changes it makes little difference whether the Government give the go-ahead, since people will simply refuse to buy meat from animals fed with GM produce?
	Has the Secretary of State seen the letter to the Prime Minister from organisations representing 8 million members, including the National Trust and the National Federation of Women's Institutes, calling for the postponement of the introduction of GM crops? The concerns raised by the Select Committee and by all those organisations are not scaremongering; they raise real questions about the dangers to the environment that may result from GM crop cultivation. Yet the Secretary of State has chosen to ignore all of them and to press ahead. Many people will want to know why, when by her own admission the economic benefits are small and limited. Until those questions have been satisfactorily answered, no approvals for commercial plantings should be given.

Margaret Beckett: Let me begin where the hon. Gentleman ended and remind him of what I said in my statement, and of what we have said repeatedly about the strategy in the report, which is that it is clear that there are few advantages to the UK of crops that are currently available. However, it is also clear that this technology has the potential to produce much greater advantage. That is why the Government have taken a case-by-case approach.
	The hon. Gentleman raised a number of issues, and he would not be very happy with me if I attempted to answer all of them. Let me pick out one or two.
	The hon. Gentleman asked what was the point of having the public dialogue to which I referred. I remind him of what the AEBC itself said when it recommended that the Government have such a dialogue. It said in terms that the intention was not to conduct some kind of referendum on the crop trials or on the decisions that flowed from them, but that it thought that there would be merit in exploring the range and spectrum of public concerns, what questions the public had and the potential range of answers.
	The hon. Gentleman also referred to the recent letter to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I say this with some caution, because I have read the letter: I think that there is a degree of confusion. That is a problem when people draw their conclusions from material that has been leaked rather than from knowledge of what has actually happened.
	The reference seems to have been to a discussion about future uses of biotechnology. That is not, of course, just genetic modification. It is a considerable range of scientific endeavour and potential scientific advantage to this country for the future. I very much doubt whether the organisations that signed that letter would wish to say, "Let us abandon all biotechnology." What should we do with all the 1 million people who are dependent on GM insulin, for example? What should we do about the poor vegetarians, who want cheese that does not have to be made with material that comes from animals? There is, as ever, scope for misunderstanding here, and it is important that we try to avoid misunderstanding.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to the devolved Administrations. I cannot remember his exact phraseology, but what he said is not correct. The devolved Administrations have not made the decision that he suggests, and we are, as ever, trying to work closely with them.
	The hon. Gentleman asked when we expected the results on winter-sown crops in tones that implied that he thought that the Government were suppressing them in some way. We shall publish those results when we receive them from the scientists in question, after they have been peer-reviewed. We have no control whatever over the timing of that, any more than we had over the timing of the first trial publication, but we anticipate that the results are likely to be available towards the end of this year.
	The hon. Gentleman went on to talk about the discussions and consultations held by the Environmental Audit Committee. We take seriously what the Committee says, and have looked with care at its observations. However, those observations drew on known material and the Committee could not draw on the further assessment, published in Nature—as it happens, on the morning of the publication of the EAC's report—which addressed some of the concerns that the Committee had raised. Having heard the Chairman of the Committee dismiss the article in Nature in all of 1½ seconds flat, I feel confident that the article will be disputed in its assessment of those concerns. However, in our judgment, and that of the scientists who carried out the assessment—independent scientists, not the same lot—it is not invalidated.
	Finally, the hon. Gentleman mentioned English Nature. As I said in my statement, it was of course English Nature that first asked the Government to carry out further trials, as we did. However, he may not have observed that Dr. Johnson of English Nature said that he thought that the results of the trials were valid and showed that growing that particular crop would be better for the environment. Dr. Johnson also made the point that electricity can kill people but we do not call for it to be banned.

Andrew George: I, too, thank the Secretary of State for providing an advance copy of her statement. I welcome the fact that it was billed as a Government statement on GM policy and not dismissed as a minor issue on one aspect of a consent licence, because this is a watershed decision.
	Some people will want to characterise the debate as being held between cavalier scientists in the pay of multinational biotech companies versus green Luddites, which could mean that we lose sight of the serious questions that need to be asked. However, the Secretary of State has partly answered some of those questions. Decisions should be based on sound science, not on hasty or make-do science. The decisions made now are probably irreversible.
	A number of questions arise from the statement. The Secretary of State announced two conditions on the growing of fodder maize. The first was that it be grown and managed "as in the trials, or under such conditions as will not result in adverse effects on the environment". But who will make that decision? How will an assessment be made before the crop is grown?
	Secondly, the Secretary of State appears to be saying that consent holders need to present new evidence if they want to renew a consent after October 2006, but they do not need to present it beforehand. In that case, why issue consents before 2006? I agree with the Conservative spokesman, the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) that the decision should be put off until at least that date.
	The AEBC says that lower threshold figures for organics should be given, but, with regard to GM contamination on organic farms, when will those decisions be made? Will it be before the first planting, which is likely to take place next year?
	I welcome the Secretary of State's comments on compensation payments, but when will they be in place? If DEFRA's arrangements for the fallen stock collection scheme are anything to go by, it will be a very long time indeed before any compensation arrangements are made.
	The Secretary of State did not answer the question about Government support for areas that want to establish GM-free zones. It is important that she send a message today to demonstrate that the Government are prepared to go to Europe for some tightening of regulations to support regions such as Cornwall, which want to set up a GM-free zone to obtain market advantage.
	The right hon. Lady also failed to answer the question—properly put—about the Government's assessment of Dr. Benbrook's research in north America into the greater use of pesticides over time. We need further independent research.
	As this is a watershed decision, the Secretary of State should have consulted Parliament rather than coming here with a statement after the decision had been made. I complained about that when she made a statement about single farm payments a few weeks ago, yet she has done the same thing today. She was unhappy about my comment that some people thought she was treating Parliament with breathtaking disdain, yet I have to point out that, although I raised the issue with Leader of the House and was promised a debate in Government time, as well as a vote on the issue, the decision has been made, so we can debate the matter only after the event. That is not good enough. A cross-party motion has been tabled in today's Order Paper calling for such a debate and, in future, the Secretary of State must consult Parliament and allow us to hold a proper debate, with a vote, on such substantive issues.

Margaret Beckett: The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that I did not manage to deal with all the questions raised by the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) and I am grateful to him for repeating some of them. As he rightly says, some of them are of some importance.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about experience in the United States. The Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment is looking at the most recent suggestions made about changes in herbicide use. Many of the other issues to which he alluded were very much part of the assessment of the science review, which tried to look at all the scientific evidence from across the world. He particularly referred to contamination, but some of that evidence is not wholly germane as, for example, there are few, if any, co-existence measures in place in the United States. However, I can assure him that both the scientific review and our advisory committees have looked at and taken into account all the various evidence.
	The hon. Gentleman asked whether decisions for thresholds for organics would be made before the first planting. We anticipate that that will be the case, although as I pointed out in my statement, little organic maize is grown in the UK, so the issue is not of major importance. However, we anticipate that the decisions will be in place. Furthermore, we intend, as soon as possible, to issue guidance on the establishment of voluntary GM-free zones, if that is what people want. We propose to address all those issues. Similarly, I have said that we will be holding consultations on compensation issues, and we shall do so.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about the management of the trials and what we meant by the new conditions that we were putting in place. In the short term, the use of atrazine will continue to be allowed, although we anticipate that it will be phased out. The wording means that a range of other management regimes can produce equivalent effects without using that herbicide; it is intended to convey that we should be confident that we are not running a regime that is any more damaging to biodiversity than the regime that was trialled—that is why I have written to the lead authority, which is the French Government, on the issue—and there are a variety of ways of doing that, as the trials showed.

Jean Corston: I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement. May I refer her to the part about public consultation? She stated that as the public learned more about GM, their hostility deepened. May I suggest that we ignore that hostility at our peril and remind her that the fastest growing part of the food sector is organics? Ten years ago, it was worth £1 million; last year it was worth £1 billion. People are very concerned that organic production will be compromised by association with GM contamination. Will she accept that many of us feel that the presence of atrazine in the comparator crop severely compromised the research? Finally, may I remind her that science is not neutral, is not always right and is almost never definitive?

Margaret Beckett: I am very mindful of that, but I have reported—faithfully, I hope—what was reported in the statement on the outcome of the public debate and dialogue. However, although that is what was said in the report of the public debate and dialogue about what was called the narrow but deep polling among a smaller group—as those in the group became more informed, their concern deepened—my hon. Friend may not be aware that the overall outcome of the debate was independently evaluated by a study. That study, which I recall was performed by Leicester university, reported that an independent evaluation of the public debate, as opposed to its being written up by the people who ran it, suggested that, although there was genuine concern—it is right that we are properly respectful of that genuine concern—it was perhaps not as deep and widespread as the outcome of the debate and dialogue report suggested. There was a greater range of views, although, of course, there is a very considerable degree of concern.
	I take the point that my hon. Friend makes. She is entitled to say that, in her judgment, the presence of atrazine in the trials invalidates them. All I can say to her is that that is not the judgment of either our independent advisory committee or the different group of scientists who assessed that aspect of the trials' outcome. Indeed, that view was peer-reviewed and not endorsed.
	My hon. Friend is right to say that people are particularly interested in organic production. I made the point a moment ago that little, if any, organic maize is produced and that organic production has grown substantially, perhaps not least because the Government have put millions of pounds into supporting and endorsing it. No one wishes to jeopardise organic production, but if my hon. Friend's argument is that we should completely ban the use of genetic modification in crops on the basis of the concerns that she expresses, that is not supported by the science. Much of the organic produce that is bought in this country comes from countries that grow GM crops in parts of their countryside.

Peter Ainsworth: Will the Secretary of State apologise for her discourtesy to the Environmental Audit Committee in deciding to make an announcement when she knew perfectly well that its report would be published 24 hours later? She referred to the Nature research. Who paid for that research, and how does a sample of four half-fields not treated with triazine make a valid basis for decision taking? Is it not the case that the scientific evidence for her decision today is at best equivocal; that the public remain implacably opposed to GM and will not be spun by the Government into acquiescing; and that where there is no demand, there is no market and therefore no reason for her decision today?

Margaret Beckett: No, I do not believe that. If the Environmental Audit Committee felt that I was discourteous, I would, of course, regret that, but I do not believe that I have shown discourtesy to the EAC. I was asked whether we would announce the outcome of the discussion on an earlier date, and the answer is no. It was always envisaged that the decision would be announced now, following further consultation and discussion.
	I do not know who paid for the Nature study, but I deplore few things more than the growing tendency to point the finger at people and say, "X paid for this; Y paid for that. Everyone is corrupt." The Nature study was conducted by independent scientists who had no interest in the outcome of the field-scale trials because, in fact, they did not conduct them. The study was peer-reviewed and would not have been published in Nature unless it was thought to be valid, so that issue ought to be put on one side.
	I think that I heard the hon. Gentleman incorrectly say on the day of publication, when he so speedily rushed to judgment on the Nature report, that a handful of fields were part of the assessment that underlay the Nature article. In fact, there were about 26 fields, with different kinds of management, and the implications of all those patterns of management were assessed.
	Finally, attempting to spin issues has never been a habit of mine, and I simply put it to the hon. Gentleman that, of course, he is right to say that there is little, if any, demand for GM produce to be bought or marketed at present—so why do we need to ban it?

Diana Organ: Why did the Government hold the consultation when they so clearly ignored the outcome of that debate? Will my right hon. Friend ensure that, if that GM crops go ahead, meat products from animals that may have been fed on GM maize are fully labelled so that consumers may choose not to eat that meat?

Margaret Beckett: For reasons that I have already made crystal clear, I do not accept that the Government have ignored the outcome of the debate. It was never intended that the debate would do more than explore the range and nature of the public's concerns. That is what it did, and it did so well. It identified the fact that the public want caution and that they want regulation and monitoring, which the Government have put in place or are putting in place, but it also confirmed that many members of the public accept that there may be circumstances in the future when this technology could be of value and that there is perhaps not the same pressure to turn one's back completely on the technology as there is from some other quarters.
	On labelling, the science review referred to how one can study whether and what material ends up in the human gut. My hon. Friend will find that there is no evidence whatever to suggest that such material survives all the way through the human digestive system. She will certainly find, if she inquires, that although few animals are fed on GM maize, many animals are fed on GM soya. We have in place a strong traceability and labelling regime. We should do everything that we can to make it relevant to people's real concerns.

Angela Browning: I do not disagree with the precautionary principle that the Secretary of State will exercise in introducing the crop and I appreciate that little organic maize is grown in this country, but has she taken advice on where the legal liability would lie if an organic crop were challenged by a GM crop? Would it lie with the grower of the GM crop, with the producer of the GM seed or with the Department that issued the licence?

Margaret Beckett: The hon. Lady says "challenged", but I presume that she does not just mean that there is a challenge. She presumably means that there is evidence of a breach. It seems to me that there would be liability if there were proof of management neglect against the farmer who grew the GM crop or if the incident happened inadvertently and was in some way a fault of the seed supplier. Liability would lie with whoever was responsible for that event—not, I fear, with the Department.

Michael Meacher: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this is the wrong decision because, now that atrazine has been banned throughout the EU, it is not supported clearly by the science? It continues to be strongly opposed by public opinion, which the Government say they want to listen to, and it is not driven, as it should be, by a public interest need for precaution, but by the commercial interests of the big biotech companies and, no doubt, pressure from the White House.
	If cross-contamination occurs, as it will, who will pay the compensation, when the industry flatly refuses to accept any liability, the Government have rightly said that they will not allow taxpayers to foot the bill and the insurance industry will not provide insurance for farmers who grow GM crops? ACRE insists that the only basis for going ahead with GM maize should be that it follows exactly the same regime as that for the trials. How will the Government secure that when it would require an amendment to the consent in Brussels to which the other 14 member states would almost certainly not agree?

Margaret Beckett: My right hon. Friend asks how we could secure that, but I have already dealt with the point about the same or equivalent regime and the question of what would happen if contamination occurred. He says that the decision is not supported by the science, but I simply disagree with him about that. He says that the decision is driven by the biotech companies, but I genuinely do not understand why people who are especially concerned—it is a legitimate concern—about the influence, advice and interests of major multinational biotech companies are desperate to get any research on, or development and experience of, the handling of genetic modification out of this country. Our independent laboratories and universities have a strong scientific reputation, so I would have thought that people might want such research to be pursued here, rather than leaving it all in the hands of those whose motives they mistrust so much.
	Finally, my right hon. Friend says that the decision was driven by the White House, but I simply say that I assume that the decision in 2004 was no more driven by the White House than the decision that he made in 1998.

Simon Thomas: I am sure that the Secretary of State is aware that the Environmental Audit Committee's report said that a decision along such lines would be irresponsible. Does she agree with that conclusion? If it was irresponsible a few days ago, why was it responsible to take such a decision today? We should turn her statement round. If the crop is so unimportant to the United Kingdom's economic future, why break the dam now? Why license the crop now to get small economic gains? The real issue is the signal that the decision sends to future licensing applications for GM crops in this country.
	The Secretary of State has not yet responded to two questions on whether areas in the United Kingdom will be able to declare themselves GM free. Will she now take the opportunity to say how that will happen—not only in respect of voluntary relationships whereby farms come together—and whether, for example, Wales and Scotland will be able to maintain their GM-free policies?

Margaret Beckett: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Before the Secretary of State replies, may I point out that every hon. Member so far has asked about four supplementary questions? That is unfair to other hon. Members who wish to be called.

Margaret Beckett: As I have said, we intend to give guidance so that if people want to set up voluntary GM-free areas, they may do so. It would not be lawful to have an arbitrary designation of a whole geographical area, but there is nothing to stop people coming together and the Government will offer advice on how that may be achieved. I do not accept that the decision is irresponsible, but I accept that there is some truth in what the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) says. The decision does send a signal. It sends a signal that the Government will try—no matter what the pressure is—to make decisions that we believe to be right on the basis of evidence that we carefully weigh. There will be disagreement about those decisions and legitimate disagreement about judgments. In the end, however, it is the Government's responsibility to do their best to make the right decisions, which is what we have done and will do.

Nigel Beard: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her statement, and especially on her reaffirmation that case-by-case scientific evidence will determine the future cultivation of genetically modified crops. What steps will be taken to protect such crops from destruction by misguided direct action?

Margaret Beckett: I would have hoped that those with a view on trying to destroy such crops would have learned a lesson from their experience in the farm-scale trials, because if they had succeeded in destroying the trials we would have had no evidence on biodiversity with which we could decide not to proceed with growing two of the crops. A cautious approach is needed, and the law on the matter applies as it does to any other action that people take.

Jonathan Sayeed: I have asked the Secretary of State on several occasions who will compensate organic farmers if their farms become contaminated by GMOs, and I am grateful to her for partially answering the question. In her reply to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning), she amplified that answer by saying that the GM seed producer or the GM farmer would have to offer compensation. Who will determine what represents contamination? Will it be determined by the Soil Association, which is, after all, the organisation that certifies that an organic farm is growing organics?

Margaret Beckett: As I have already indicated, consideration will occur on a case-by-case basis, and who will be liable for any compensation will depend on what happens in a specific instance. With regard to how a case would be judged, we have indicated that we will consult on thresholds. We do not oppose the notion that there should be a lower threshold for organic crops, but we think that it is wise to consider that case by case because it must be realistic; otherwise, it will harm the interests of organic growers and others.

David Drew: My right hon. Friend will be aware that her decision will have wide ramifications for the third world and, especially, the new entrant states. Some of us see this as a Trojan crop. What advice can she offer the Governments of those countries when they come under pressure from the biotech industry to introduce other crops on a licensed basis? What guarantee can she give this country's consumers that they will be eating non-GM in the future?

Margaret Beckett: There is a limit to the extent of the guarantee that anyone can give because there is much GM material grown throughout the world and one cannot undo the reality of what has already been done. The EU has a strict traceability and labelling regime—I think we were one of the first Governments to put it into law—and we will monitor that to ensure that it is observed. He makes an important point about the third world. The UK is a signatory to the Cartagena protocol, which puts in place an international regime of advice, support and monitoring to help developing countries to reach decisions.
	I simply make one point to my hon. Friend and others who are understandably concerned about the matter. I recently read an observation from someone who studies such issues in the developing world closely who said that if, for example, one could get a good and reliable crop of maize to grow in the climatic, pest and disease conditions of Africa, that single step would mean that millions of people would be lifted out starvation. Although I completely accept that there is much more to hunger and famine than that—especially given the possible impact of climate change—it seems to me that it would be folly to turn our backs on a technique that might allow us to tackle the problems of salinity, drought and other difficult conditions.

John Gummer: Does the right hon. Lady accept that her statement would have been unpopular and questioned by hon. Members on both sides of the House irrespective of what she had announced? Her decision seems to be a sensible way forward in difficult circumstances, and as we would have had few developments over the past 500 years without such decisions, it is necessary for the opportunity to be given.
	Does the right hon. Lady accept that one part of her statement is especially important, because some conventional mechanisms for growing crops are seen to be environmentally damaging? How does she intend to try to identify those so that we can improve the environment of our nation for the benefit of all?

Margaret Beckett: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who is quite right. Professor Pollock, who oversaw the trials, made the point that throughout history the human race and wildlife have competed for the sun. When wildlife is in the ascendant, as it was, for example, in the middle ages, many members of the human race went hungry, even in countries such as ours. However, we are now in danger of biasing the decision too far in the opposite direction. It is hugely important that evidence going far wider than anecdotal evidence is available to us for the first time about the impact on the environment and biodiversity of some conventional crops. The advisory committees to which I referred are pursuing those issues, looking at what research can be done and how we can follow it through, but I think that that is the most important lesson of all from those trials.

Anne Campbell: My right hon. Friend has achieved a difficult balance. I think that she got it right and applied a very precautionary principle in making her decision. Does she agree, however, that the stringent operation of the trials and the criteria used to approve the particular variety of maize send a clear signal to the GM industry that in future it needs to concentrate on varieties that will have much less damaging effects on the environment so that we can look forward to GM varieties that perform much better in relation to the environment than the conventional varieties that we are using at the moment?

Margaret Beckett: My hon. Friend is entirely right, and I am grateful for her remarks. One lesson is that it is important for GM companies to consider, as others must, the impact on the environment of their choices. It is also important that they accept that one lesson of the public dialogue was that people did not feel the need to attenuate their hostility to the technology because they saw little benefit for humans in many of the present developments. If people who are engaged in research in this field could turn their attention to things that have a clear net benefit for the human race, that would make a significant difference.

Sue Doughty: In 2002, research published by Newcastle university showed that bacteria in the intestine could pick up GM material in the stomach. The public are concerned about the fact that we do not have enough sound scientific research about the flow of GM material from one species to another. Is the Minister considering the possibility of substantial research so that the public can be satisfied about perceived risks to human health and their fears allayed?

Margaret Beckett: We have known since the 1940s that such a flow of material was possible, and it has frequently been studied for various reasons and in different areas. The hon. Lady is right that those issues are of interest and concern, and people are following them. She will find in the science review a reference to the studies that have been carried out, and she will know that the World Health Organisation does not perceive that there is any special impact on human health from the growing of GM crops available at present. It is because that applies to crops available at present that a case-by-case approach is important. I understand that the British Medical Association made a similar point just this morning.

Kate Hoey: Does the Secretary of State accept that such an important decision, which many members of the public and Members of Parliament oppose, will set a precedent and is the thin end of the wedge? Should we not therefore have a vote in the House after a proper debate, and will she assure me that, if this goes ahead, compensation for organic farmers whose farms are contaminated will be on the statute book before the final decision is made?

Margaret Beckett: I have already dealt with the issue of compensation, and I repeat to my hon. Friend, as I have to others, that, yes, we anticipate that we will deal with the co-existence regime and will also be able to deal with and resolve the issue of contamination. We also anticipate further discussions in the House. She is right, however, that these are important, complex and difficult decisions that, as the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) said, will undoubtedly make us unpopular with various players. That is what is called being in government.

Michael Jack: The right hon. Lady's statement illustrated the care with which she has assessed the difficult scientific and environmental issues surrounding the matter in reaching her conclusions. May I press her to make it clear in Government publicity the basis on which the decision was made, as there is ignorance about such matters and a need for education? Will she also clarify the use of the technology when applied to the plant as a biofactory? Finally, will farmers who choose to plant the approved variety be able to do so without public identification or announcement of their planting intentions?

Margaret Beckett: I shall consider the right hon. Gentleman's final point—because there will not be trials such announcements may not be necessary. I am grateful for his remarks as Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and we will do everything possible to convey the basis of our decision to people who, I suspect, will be beset by a fog of misinformation. He is also right to draw attention to the potential of the technology as a biofactory. I heard a passing reference from a Nobel scientist to its potential as a technique to produce plants that can fix their own nitrogen, which would mean that we would move away from the regime of fertilisers and so on, which has bedevilled much of our environment for a long time.

Geraint Davies: My right hon. Friend said in her statement that it was "highly unlikely that any stray remaining plant or seed would survive a winter here and thus cause concern about a subsequent crop. Equally, very little organic maize is grown here". In other words, there is a perceptible risk of environmental contamination. There is a growing demand for organic food, not an appetite for GM food, so would it not be wise to learn the lessons evident in the behaviour of bigger companies such as Unilever, Nestlé, Sainsbury and Tesco, which are not pursuing GM foods because they are consumer-driven, not scientifically led? Perhaps we should be more democratically led, not driven by disputable scientific interpretations that, it is accepted, still leave a possible opening for environmental contamination.

Margaret Beckett: It is because I use words with care and try to use them accurately that I used the words that he quoted. Of course, there is potential for cross-contamination and cross-pollination between one crop and another, but as maize is not native to this country it has no wild relatives, so that is irrelevant in this case. Similarly, I said that stray plants or seeds were unlikely to survive the winter because they are not native to this country. Strong substances such as atrazine had to be used in conjunction with the growing of maize because it is difficult to grow the crop in the UK as it does not belong here.
	My hon. Friend talked about disputable science, and suggested that other approaches would be better. The technology has been more scrutinised and tested than any other. In the farm-scale trials we compared the use of genetically modified crops and others, and discovered information about the use of conventional crops and their impact on biodiversity that was not previously known. The vast majority of stuff that we have eaten for generations has never been studied in this way. Cabbage contains 17 or 27 substances that, fed separately in sufficient quantities to animals, can be carcinogenic. Should we all stop eating cabbage—[Interruption.] There are some good recipes using cabbage.
	It is because I would not make up my mind in advance of the evidence and ban the use of genetic modification in crops that I have been accused of being pro-GM. I am not pro-GM any more than I am pro-Petri dishes or pro-mass spectrometry. It is a technique or tool that allows us to do with rather more precision something that the human race has been doing since the dawn of time. If the human race had not been doing so, most of us would not be here and the ones who were would be very hungry.

Robert Key: I welcome the right hon. Lady's sensible and balanced statement. She and her sceptical Ministers must have taken some convincing, but I am confident that they are right to move forward cautiously. Does she agree that the silent majority have found it difficult to hear the voice of sound science, and that one reason for that—I say this in the nicest possible way, without any criticism of the Minister involved—is that we do not have a science Minister in the House of Commons? Next time round, we need a science Minister in the House of Commons who is not bound by conflicts of interest that prevent him from saying anything about the issue.

Margaret Beckett: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks and for his consistent view that we should assess the technology very carefully.

Sex Discrimination (Clubs and Other Private Associations)

David Wright: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the prevention of sex discrimination in relation to membership of, or the benefits, facilities and services afforded by, clubs and other private associations.
	In promoting the Bill, I follow in the distinguished footsteps of the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr. Walter) and of my good friend, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda), who tried to introduce a similar Bill. I am also indebted to Lord Faulkner for trying to move the issue forward in the other place.
	More than 70 years ago, the area that I represent returned to this House Edith Picton-Turberville, who was a campaigning Labour MP renowned for her commitment to tackling discrimination. I cannot but think that she would be somewhat surprised that in the early 21st century we are still attempting to legislate to end discrimination against women. I hope that she would be pleased that one of her successors is still working in this House to tackle such discrimination.
	The purpose of the Bill is to bring private clubs within the coverage of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 by making unlawful the unequal treatment of male and female members, associates and guests of mixed-sex private clubs with 25 or more members. That mirrors a similar provision in the Race Relations Act 1976. Let me take a brief look at how the Sex Discrimination Act applies to clubs. At present, section 29 applies to all clubs that are open to the public or to a section of the public: that is, where a person or a particular group of people can pay their money and enter the club—examples would be nightclubs and some sports clubs—to use its facilities and services. Those clubs cannot discriminate on the grounds of sex. If a member of a public club has been discriminated against on those grounds, they can take action under the auspices of the Act. Private members' clubs have been found by the courts not to come within the scope of section 29 because they provide facilities and services to their own private members, not directly to the public. The Sex Discrimination Act, as interpreted to date, allows such clubs to discriminate against members in the facilities that they offer because the discrimination has occurred in a "private" sphere.
	Why bring private clubs within the scope of anti-discrimination legislation? In the past, private clubs have been asked to take voluntary action to abolish discriminatory practices. Some mixed-sex clubs have made a real effort to achieve that, but others still discriminate on grounds of sex. It is interesting to note that the availability of national lottery resources, which are allocated to clubs on the basis that they do not discriminate, has prompted many of them to change their practices. I am also pleased to say that, as far I can tell from my research, no clubs in Telford operate discriminatory practices. Perhaps it is time for others to follow our example.
	Excluding women from equal treatment as full members of mixed-sex clubs is simply unfair and can involve demeaning and humiliating treatment. What kind of discrimination do women face in private members' clubs? I understand that more than half the 3,000 working men's clubs that belong to the Club and Institute Union still deny their female members full rights. They often restrict women's use of certain facilities, give them restricted voting rights and deny them access to the annual general meeting. Many golf clubs are the worst culprits in relation to discriminatory practice. Some still restrict playing times for women members to, for example, peak hours at weekends. Such treatment can deprive members of potentially valuable associations and networking opportunities, which can in turn have an adverse effect on their personal and professional lives.
	In summary, what would the Bill achieve? It would have an impact on mixed-sex private clubs with 25 or more members by making unlawful unequal treatment between their male and female members, associates or guests. It would not affect single-sex clubs, other than by making unlawful the unequal treatment of male and female guests at an occasion to which guests of both sexes were invited.
	I hope that the House will support the Bill. It is supported by the Equal Opportunities Commission and has a great deal of cross-party backing. I understand that the Government have warm feelings about it; and it is supported by a glittering array of parliamentary talent.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by David Wright, Mr. Parmjit Dhanda, Mr. Robert Walter, Mr. David Stewart, Vera Baird, Mr. Tom Harris, Mr. David Heath, Ann McKechin, Ms Meg Munn, Peter Bradley, Mrs. Lorna Fitzsimons and Liz Blackman.

Sex Discrimination (Clubs and Other Private Associations)

David Wright accordingly presented a Bill to make provision for the prevention of sex discrimination in relation to membership of, or the benefits, facilities and services afforded by, clubs and other private associations: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 14 May, and to be printed [Bill 68]. Opposition Day

Iraq (Attorney-General's Advice)

Elfyn Llwyd: I beg to move,
	That this House believes that all advice prepared by the Attorney-General on the legality of the war in Iraq should be published in full.
	I am pleased to be speaking to the motion, which stands in my name and in those of my hon. Friends. It is co-sponsored by Plaid Cymru—the party of Wales—and the Scottish National party.
	The wording of the motion is tightly drawn, but for further clarity I should say that this debate is not about whether one was for or against the conflict in Iraq. As was explained to the House, my colleagues in Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party were against military action in Iraq before it started because we were not persuaded that the war was justified. We did not believe that either dossier displayed any credible threat, immediate or otherwise, from the tyrant Saddam, and that remains our opinion. There was no justification for the war then: ergo, there is a real question about the legality of the action that was taken. That is the issue on which we hope to concentrate this afternoon.
	As the motion makes plain, we are calling for the Government to publish the advice or advices of the Attorney-General, because without such publication it will not be possible fully to inform the debate. Incidentally, both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have described the debate and the disagreement as "legitimate." If we accept that the debate is legitimate, surely it is part of the function of Ministers of the Crown to inform it fully and apprise Parliament of all facts that are germane to the issue. That is beyond contradiction. In calling for the publication of the advice or advices, we call on the Government to inform the House.
	Nothing in the "Ministerial Code" prevents the full publication of the advice or advices. In the foreword to the current code, the Prime Minister says:
	"I believe we should be absolutely clear about how Ministers should account, and be held to account, by Parliament."
	Paragraph 5 on page 1 states:
	"The code should be read against the background of the overarching duty on Ministers to comply with the law including international law and treaty obligations."
	Ministers are expected to observe the seven principles of public life, which include openness. The code states:
	"Holders of public office should be as open as possible about all the decisions and actions they take. They should give reasons for their decisions and restrict information only when the wider public interest clearly demands."
	The code therefore provides that Ministers should be as open as possible with Parliament and the public, refusing information only when that is considered to be in the public interest.
	When considering the disclosure by Ministers of Law Officers' opinions, it is helpful to consult "The Law Officers of the Crown" by J. Ll. J. Edwards. The chapter of the 1964 edition entitled "Attorney-General's Fiat and Responsibility to Parliament" states on page 259:
	"When Parliament is faced with situations involving the disclosure of the contents of the Law Officer's opinions to departmental Ministers, it is surely impossible to be dogmatic and to assert either the principle of absolute confidentiality, or on the other hand, a rule requiring the government to reveal in full or in part the content of the opinions. There may be circumstances, as exemplified by the Belfast Riots and the Archer Shee cases, in which everything is to be gained by telling the House all the facts."
	It continues on page 260 that
	"the better constitutional convention is the flexible rule expressed in Erskine May".
	The rule states:
	"The opinions of the Law Officers of the Crown, being confidential, are not usually laid before Parliament or cited in debate . . . But if a Minister deems it expedient that such opinions should be made known for the information of the House, he is entitled to cite them in debate.'"
	Page 261 of Edwards states:
	"Intransigence on the part of Ministers or Members of the Commons when issues of this nature arise for debate is not calculated to enhance the prestige of Parliament or the administration of justice. So far as the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General are concerned, in suitable cases sufficient reason should be given to convince the House of Commons that the Law Officer has considered all the relevant factors and has reached his decision with that impartiality of judgement which is the ultimate strength and protection of the constitutional independence of the Law Officers of the Crown."
	There are several examples of the disclosure of Law Officers' advices. For example, Law Officers' advice on the compatibility of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 has been publicly available in the Public Record Office since 1998. Their advice on the legality of proposed merchant shipping legislation and its compatibility with European law, as disclosed to the courts in the Factortame litigation, is available in the House of Lords Record Office. In a written answer on 12 January, Baroness Amos stated:
	"In 1993, Law Officers' advice relevant to the subject matter of the Arms to Iraq inquiry was disclosed to the Scott inquiry."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 January 2004; Vol. 656, c. WA 64.]
	Hon. Members may remember that the advice was published in its entirety as an annexe to the report.
	The Government's amendment refers to a hard-and-fast convention. I do not know on what evidence they base that. There is no hard-and-fast, time-honoured convention.

Simon Thomas: My hon. Friend is doing a sterling job through his revelations. We have been told for several weeks that it is not the convention to reveal the Attorney-General's advice. My hon. Friend has explained that such advice has been disclosed in the past and, dare I say it, on issues that appear to be less important than going to war with Iraq.
	My hon. Friend knows that many of those who lead our armed forces in Iraq wanted unambiguous advice up to five days before the start of the conflict. Only then did they receive two lines of advice from the Attorney-General. Surely my hon. Friend's comments and our knowledge of the war present a case that it is crucial for Ministers to answer. Perhaps they will take the opportunity to intervene on my hon. Friend to explain why the advice has not been published.

Elfyn Llwyd: My hon. Friend speaks for himself and makes an important point. There is great anxiety in not only the House but the public arena about the reason for not producing the advice or advices.
	I am worried about the Government's stance. Apart from setting what appears to be a precedent for the Government to extract what is expedient for them from the document and make only that public, thereby applying soundbite politics again, the precise subject matter of the advice and its context are worrying.

Lembit �pik: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the precedent, which the amendment mentions, was broken by the Government's selectively sharing some of the advice? Does he further agree that there is no difference in principle between sharing part of the advice, as the Government have done, and sharing all of it, as the rest of us want?

Elfyn Llwyd: The hon. Gentleman is right. It is an added concern, which has recently been widely mentioned. There is no distinction, although there are more examples of such actions in the past.
	Treasury counselsenior, independent counselwould have received a set of instructions when advising the Attorney-General. Their accuracy or veracity is key. If counsel were ill informed or, perchance, misled about a key component of the instructions, the advice would be flawed from the start. In the case that we are considering, the instructions would undoubtedly have set out the Government's case for war. It is fundamentally important to establish whether the instructions contained references to the infamous 45-minute claim. If they did, and counsel accepted them as valid, the whole basis of the advice could have been flawed or skewed from the beginning.
	Furthermore, did the Government argue that the 12-year-old United Nations resolutions were extant? Was that presented to counsel as an undisputable fact? Again, if so, the advice could have been skewed from the beginning.

Ian Lucas: Is the hon. Gentleman making the case that the instructions on which the advice was given should be disclosed too? The motion does not make that clear.

Elfyn Llwyd: I shall go into detail about that later, but I shall also deal with the point briefly now. Counsel's advice would undoubtedly include the instructions, because he or she would have to base his opinion firmly on the facts before him or her at the time. Given that the hon. Gentleman is a lawyer, I am surprised by his intervention. Perhaps it shows why he is here and not in practice.

Ian Lucas: I am surprised by that response, because clearly a set of instructions to counsel is distinct from the advice that is tendered in response to them. The hon. Gentleman is completely misleading the House with that suggestion.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman might wish to reconsider that remark. Certainly, the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) is not misleading the House.

Ian Lucas: What was said was clearly inadvertent, but will the hon. Gentleman accept that the advice and the instructions that led to it are distinct documents?

Elfyn Llwyd: The hon. Gentleman is a questionable parliamentarian as well.
	We want to know whether the Government stated as a fact that the 12-year-old UN resolutions were extant. That is why the question that the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) put to the Prime Minister last Wednesday, which echoes my remarks, was hugely significant. He asked:
	The Attorney-General has provided three written replies to the effect that he did not rely on any facts in Government dossiers when reaching his opinion that Iraq had failed to disarm. In those circumstances, what factual material was he given by the Government from which he could draw that conclusion?
	I am making the same point. The Prime Minister's response was:
	The Attorney-General was given whatever material he required to make his decision, but the basis of the decision was that Iraq continued in material breach of UN resolutions. I must tell my hon. and learned Friend that in respect of resolution 1441 there was a whole series of things that Iraq was supposed to do under Saddam Hussein . . . The point, surely, is that the Iraq survey group has already found that there was a failure to disclose proper information to the United Nations inspectors and that there was a series of activities and programmes in breach of UN resolutions, so it is completely obvious that Iraq was in material breach of resolution 1441.[Official Report, 3 March 2004; Vol. 418, c. 895.]
	Many of us throughout the House thought that that reply was insufficient and, in fact, not a little demeaning, considering the seriousness of the question and its subject.
	I refer in passing to a further case in point. It is our understanding that in the Katharine Gun case, which collapsed on 25 February, the prosecution decided to offer no evidence on receipt of Mrs. Gun's defence statement. She was running a defence of necessity, in other words, to prevent unjustified loss of life and damage to property. That would have made it necessary to produce the Attorney-General's opinion or advice to the defence. Usually in such circumstances, the Crown would have applied by counsel to the trial judge to exempt it from producing that, on the ground of public interest immunity, and such a certificate would not have been granted if the advice were equivocal. Again, that highlights the need for the full advice to be produced.

George Foulkes: I think that the hon. Gentleman is a lawyer, like my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas). Is that right?

Elfyn Llwyd: Yes.

George Foulkes: I thought so. Is not all this pettifogging? Is it not far more important that Saddam Hussein is in custody and that Iraq is liberated and moving towards democracy and prosperity? If the hon. Gentleman and his nationalist allies had had their way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, killing and torturing hundreds of thousands of people.

Elfyn Llwyd: There is more to it than that. If the right hon. Gentleman were in the Old Bailey facing a charge of breaching the Official Secrets Act 1989which is apparently what he wants to happen to his one-time friend the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short)he would not call legal niceties pettifogging. Those niceties are the bulwark that ensures that our rights are preserved. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks so little of them, after so many years in this House, I despair.

David Winnick: I am going to the Home Affairs Committee in a moment, so I will be unable to listen to the rest of the debate. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, for many of us, the question of human rights in Iraq was not a petty, unimportant issue, but that we considered human rights there and in Kosovo in the same light? As I remember it, the nationalist parties opposed intervention in Kosovo, as they did in Iraq. If a regime such as Saddam's, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) has said, is responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people over the years, why should we in the House of Commons oppose military action to end such tyranny?

NOTHING

NOTHING

Elfyn Llwyd: No one in this House, I imagine, would ever have supported the Saddam regime. No one in my party has ever said anything of the kind, and no one ever would. However, the remit of this debate is to look at the legal process and to see where Parliament fits into that process, if at all.

Llew Smith: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that some of those who are now the fiercest critics of Saddam Hussein failed to join some of us when we were demonstrating against his regime in the 1980s and campaigning against the arms trade with his and other evil regimes?

Elfyn Llwyd: The hon. Gentleman has a long history of consistency on this subject, and I take his point on board. I fully agree.

Diane Abbott: Given that we are a signatory to the International Criminal Court, surely the question of whether the war was legal is not pettifogging, but goes to the heart of whether we support in principle and in practice the framework of international law.

Elfyn Llwyd: The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I add that, at a time when allied forces are quite properly trying to bring normality back to Iraq, one index of that normality will be the rule of law. How can we impose the rule of law on Iraq when we ignore, at our peril, international law in its entirety? That does not make a great deal of sense.

Jeremy Corbyn: Has the hon. Gentleman had a chance to read Hans Blix's statement on the way in which he was removed from Iraq while still undertaking weapons inspection, and replaced by the Iraq survey group, which did not find any weapons of mass destruction? Mr. Blix is concerned that the real aim of the United States and Britain was always to go to war, rather than to achieve some kind of peaceful resolution to what was obviously a serious situation.

Elfyn Llwyd: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, who knows that we opposed the war from the beginning.
	I return to the theme of the debate, which is fairly tightly drawn, to pursue the question of the Attorney-General's advice. If his advices were to be published in full, the matter might be laid to rest. As I said earlier, counsel invariably sets out in its advices the precise facts on which its instructions are based. The advice takes shape as those facts are assimilated and the law applied. That is why this question is of such huge import. Some might say that in publishing the advice, the Government would open a Pandora's box and give rise to such claims being made day in, day out. The answer to that is that there will be a discretion, as at the moment, but that what makes the present case so compelling is the consequence of the advice given, and the question of whether Members of Parliament were adequately informed of what was going on when the House voted on the matter some time ago. We need to pursue that because otherwise we will from now on be given only what the Prime Minister considers to be good for us, which cannot be right in any democracy. My party would resist that at all costs.
	Another cardinal point in favour of publishing the advice in full is that this was the first occasion on which UK forces went to war almost solely on the basis of intelligence. Lord Boyce, the then Chief of the Defence Staff, was so concerned that a few days before

George Foulkes: On how many occasions was the intelligence dossier referred to during the debate on 17 March, and how many questions were asked about it? There were only a couple of questions, and it was mentioned only once in passing. That was not the basis for the decision; the basis was the way in which Saddam Hussein flouted resolution after resolution of the UN, including 1441. That was what was referred to in the debate.

Elfyn Llwyd: I shall refer briefly to resolution 1441 later. Frankly, I cannot say precisely how many times the dossier was referred to. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will do so if he catches your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speakerheaven preserve us.
	Days before the conflict began, Lord Boyce demanded an unequivocal legal authority for the invasion of Iraq. This is, therefore, an important issue.

Calum MacDonald: The admiral demanded that before the Attorney-General's view was published. What I am really puzzled by is the fact that none of those who oppose the case for the legality of the war addresses the Attorney-General's argument. Will the hon. Gentleman do that now? The Attorney-General said that the Security Council had decided[Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is making an intervention.

Elfyn Llwyd: The hon. Gentleman makes my case for me. How can I argue about the full advice if I have not seen it? That is a fairly obvious point.

Calum MacDonald: The hon. Gentleman does not need the full advice. All he has to do is address the logic of the Attorney-General's argument. Does he refute the fact put forward by the Attorney-General that the Security Council had decided that Iraq was in breach of resolution 1441; that in so being, it was in breach of resolution 687; and that being in breach of 687 invoked the right to use force as expressed in resolution 678? That is the only fact that the hon. Gentleman needs to make his argument.

Elfyn Llwyd: It most definitely is not, with great respect to the hon. Gentleman. In a few moments, I shall deal with the three resolutions, albeit in a fairly short time. Frankly, it is not enough for the hon. Gentleman simply to disclose something written on a sheet of A4 paper that purports to be the Attorney-General's full advice

Calum MacDonald: What matters is not how long it is, but the logic.

Elfyn Llwyd: I shall come to the logic. If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I will deal with that point in a moment.

Dominic Grieve: The hon. Gentleman said that a key issue was that the decision to go to war was taken on the basis of intelligence. Is not another key issue the fact that the decision was, at the Government's own request, taken by this House, this Parliament? That was wholly unprecedented, and in order to persuade Parliament to back them the Government saw fit to place before Parliament a large amount of material, including part of the Attorney-General's advice.

Elfyn Llwyd: That is absolutely right, but I take exception to being given only a part of anybody's advice.
	Some apologists will say that legal professional privilege might apply in supporting non-disclosure, but in my view it would not apply in this instance. The Government are concerned about the lack of trust with which the public treat politicians in general and the Government more specifically. How can they expect to build up that relationship when they behave in this way? How is a member of the public expected to engage, if he or she is not allowed to see fully what is going on?
	The Government have talked extensively about freedom of information and openness. There was even talk of another Freedom of Information Act. That must have been nothing but spin, in the light of the Government's record in general and of this episode in particular. I hope that the Government will change their mind about producing the full advice to Dr. Ann Abraham, the parliamentary ombudsman. Failure to do so would be to undermine her office completely.
	I shall now deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. MacDonald). The Attorney-General believed that resolutions 678 and 687 were both revived, and that 1441 would allow for military action, as was anticipated by resolution 678. He believed therefore that there was automaticity in resolution 1441 and a trigger for action. However, that is not what was understood by the combined ranks of the Governments of France, Germany and Russia. I would suggest that such mass misunderstanding is rare in international diplomacy.

Diane Abbott: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Elfyn Llwyd: I will, but I want to make this the last intervention that I take. I must make some progress.

Diane Abbott: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Is it not the case that resolution 1441 was passed only because of assurances that there was no automaticity?

Elfyn Llwyd: The hon. Lady is right; that is precisely the point that I was trying to make.
	Following the adoption of resolution 1441, the United Kingdom's ambassador to the United Nations said:
	There is no 'automaticity' in this Resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion as required under operational paragraph 12.
	Turning to what the Attorney-General has made known, we find that he said that resolution 678 authorised force against Iraq. I do not disagree with that. However, that force related only to Kuwait[Interruption.] Well, that is what he has said in the information that he has given us. He said that resolution 687 set out ceasefire conditions, then somehow came to the conclusion that those two old resolutions, which were specifically drawn up to authorise action in Iraq following the invasion of Kuwait

Calum MacDonald: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Elfyn Llwyd: No, I have already explained that I must make some progress.
	Many experts believe that the Attorney-General's argument is flawed, because although resolution 678 authorised military action, using the diplomatic language all necessary means, that referred specifically to military action to free Kuwait. Resolution 687 marked the permanent ceasefire. It did not adopt or preserve the right to use force set out under resolution 678, although such words did appear in paragraph 4 of resolution 686. Rabinder Singh, QC, said in his opinion of 10 September 2002 that there was a clear recognition that the right to use force required express terms if it was to be continued, and that the absence of clear terms in any resolution after 686 led to the conclusion that no such use of force was authorised.
	Further, resolution 687 states that the Security Council
	decides to remain seized of the matter and to take such further steps as may be required for the implementation of the present resolution and to secure peace and security in the region.
	That clearly suggests that the Security Council will remain seized of the matter and will itself decide what further steps might be required for the implementation of that resolution. We must remember that both resolutions 678 and 687 were specific to the matter of Kuwait. It is therefore difficult to follow the Attorney-General's thesis in the material with which he has graced us. That is, that those resolutions somehow authorise the use of force. In my submission, according to their wording it is impossible to accept an implicit authorisation for the use of force without a further resolution, because the Security Council remained seized of the matter.
	At this juncture, I could cite the opinions of many respected international lawyers who would agree that such authorisation was not and is not revived. This aspect of the argument has been debated before and the ground has been well covered. To be fair, some respected lawyers have also given a differing opinion, but they are in a small minority. There is, as the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have said, a legitimate debate. Over the weekend, the Prime Minister urged usin new Labour parlanceto find closure on that debate and to move on.
	Sir Adam Roberts, professor of international relations at Oxford university, recently said that there was, in principle, a possible case for the lawfulness of resorting to war, but that the US and UK Governments had overstated the Iraqi threat. On the question of whether the Attorney-General's advice should be published, however, he said:
	Of course I'd like to see the full advice. What we have seen of the Attorney-General's advice does not deal with the key question of why the situation was deemed so urgent that inspectors had to be withdrawn and forces sent in.
	On the question of legality, Malcolm Shaw, QC, professor of law at Leicester university, said:
	On the basis of intelligence we had at the time and publicly available knowledge, there was a credible and reasonable argument in favour of the legality of the war.
	When asked about disclosure of the full advice, however, he said:
	I don't see why not. There's no constitutional bar to doing so.
	Nick Grief, professor of law at Bournemouth university and a specialist in international law, said that he did not believe that there was a legal basis. As to the publication of the Attorney-General's advice, he said, Definitely. James Crawford, professor of international law at Cambridge university, is unclear as to the legality. On the disclosure of the Attorney-General's advice, however, he said:
	If the war was conducted in private, there would be every case for hiding the advice. If it's going to be fought with public funds, in public and expending the lives of members of the public, then it should be published.
	Lord Alexander, QC, did not believe the war to be lawful, and on the question of the Attorney-General's advice, he said:
	Yes. I want to do justice to the Attorney General's arguments. This was the most important legal opinion given in the last quarter of a century. The Attorney has already published a summary. So why not publish the whole text. There's no legal distinction between the two.
	Those are five distinguished international lawyers who have differing views on the first question, but are unanimous on the question of the publication in full of the Attorney-General's advice.
	To conclude, I emphasise that the House will be asked to divide this evening on the specific motion before it. Despite the opinions held by me and my colleagues, it is not meant to be a further vote on the war. The question before the House is whether the Attorney-General's advice on Iraq should be published in full. Those who believe in informed democratic debate, freedom of information and transparency in government should have no problem joining us in the Lobby this evening. I urge every right hon. and hon. Member to consider the matter carefully and to support the motion.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Jack Straw: I beg to move,
	That this House notes the long-standing convention, followed by successive governments, that the advice of the Law Officers is given in confidence and is not disclosed publicly; notes, however, the Answer given in the House of Lords by the Attorney General on 17th March 2003 which set out his view of the legal basis of the use of force against Iraq, and the letter of the same date from the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee giving more detail of the legal position; and believes that the priority now for the Government is to help the Iraqi people rebuild Iraq.
	I am grateful to the Welsh nationalists and Scottish nationalists for using their time for this debate. The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) began by telling the House that he would confine his argument to the case for publication of the legal advice. As his speech went on, however, he developed his case into an argument about the nature of the legal advice as to whether the war was legally justified. At the end of his speech, he provided the astonishing and illuminating revelation that when two or more lawyers are gathered together and consider the same question, they almost always disagree.
	On this issue, from the very start, there have patently been legitimate disagreements about whether, in the event of there not being a second resolutiona point with which I will deal laterit would have been and was lawful to take military action against the Saddam Hussein regime in the circumstances that we found last spring. I respect those arguments, but I wholly resist the insinuation in the hon. Gentleman's speech that the Attorney-General, and Ministers reflecting his view, have somehow not been straightforward with the House about the nature of the legal advice that he gave or that we received.
	As the amendment states, a long-standing convention exists that the advice of the Law Officers to Ministers is given in confidence and should not be published. I have never thought, however, that precedent alone is sufficient justification for anything, and, of course, the Government, like all our predecessors, have been prepared to depart from previously accepted conventions when there has been a good reason. The bigger question is therefore why there are strong substantive arguments in favour of this convention, now and for the future.
	First, a general principle applies to all relationships between lawyers and those whom they advise that the advice that they offer must in principle be given in confidence. If we want our societies to be based on the rule of law, as we do, we must have properly qualified lawyers who are subject to high standards of professional integrity. To be effective, lawyers require the confidence of their clients. All of us who have practisedeven for a short while, as I didknow that there could and would be no effective relationship if the advice that we gave, which must sometimes not be the advice that our client would wish to hear, was disclosable to the other party in civil proceedings or to the court or the defence in criminal proceedings, or was made publicly available. If that were so, our system of justice as a whole would suffer.

Dominic Grieve: I agree with that statement in its entirety. Is it not the case, however, that the Government, as the client, chose to waive at least part of their privilege in relation to the document, because they chose to publish a summary of the Attorney-General's advice rather than simply stating, It is the Government's view that . . . ? Why did the Government do that? Was it not in fact to back up their position, which ought therefore to make them reconsider whether the full advice should not be made available now, given the circumstances that have arisen?

Jack Straw: On a number of previous occasions, Governments, including those of the hon. Gentleman's party, have made available to the House the outline opinion of Law Officers. For example, in relation to Maastricht, which some of my hon. Friends will remember well, the then Labour Opposition moved an amendment to ensure that we could sign up to the social chapter. Along with many arguments put forward there was the argument that if we signed up to the social chapter, and overturned the protocol which the Major Government had signed up to, we would not be able to ratify the whole Maastricht treaty, and we were told that that argument was made on the basis of legal advice. A Minister then came to the House rather shamefacedly and told us that, by the way, that was wrong, and that, after all, we could, if we wished, remove the opt-out from the social chapter and still sign up to and ratify the Maastricht treaty. On that occasion, the Foreign Secretary came to the House and gave an outline of the basis for the subsequent opinion, which is very similar to that which I gave the House on 17 March last year, and the Attorney-General went to Committee and gave an outline of the case, but he never published his advice.
	To the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), whom I respect, I say that if the Conservative party is serious about getting into office, about which I have grave doubts, it ought to think one, two, three, four and many more times before going down the opportunistic route of backing the Scottish and Welsh nationalists. I have been through all the speeches made this time last year and previously. I can remember no occasion whatevernot oneon which Conservative Front-Bench spokespeople demanded to see the full text of the Attorney-General's advice. What I do remember, for sure, is that people had legitimate legal arguments about that advice. I also remember a very good speech, which was not in agreement with the Government, by the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), in which he said:
	I do not speak of the legalities. I have read what the Attorney-General said about that matter and I do not feel competent to express a view as to whether he is right or wrong, but I am competent to say this: many distinguished lawyersas distinguished as the Attorney-Generalwill take a contrary view.
	That is certainly true. He continued:
	In any event, if I am honest, I do not think that legalities go to the root of the matter. The real question is whether it is rightright expressed in moral terms.[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 796.]
	He then disagreed with what the Government were doing, and I entirely respect him for that. Lest there be any doubt, however, it is of course absolutely essential that although morality was at the heart of what we were doing, Governments must be satisfied that what they do is also legally correct. At the heart of the argument last year was the question of whether or not it was morally and politically right to take military action, and that remains the case.

Alex Salmond: The legal arguments were rather important, and I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for reminding us of the days when he used to support disclosure of such matters, but he did less than justice to what my hon. Friend the Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) said about the opinion of major international lawyers. The point was not that they disagreed about the conflict, but that although they disagreed about the conflict, they agreed that the Attorney-General's advice, in its full form, should be disclosed. If the Foreign Secretary resents the insinuation behind that, he has the remedy of publishing the advice.

Jack Straw: I shall come to the issue of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. My position on disclosure in opposition was entirely consistent with the position I have taken in government.

Llew Smith: I accept that if a private individual seeks legal advice, he or she has a right to ensure that it remains confidential. If I may state the obvious, however, a Government are not a private individual but a democratically elected, accountable body. How can accountability be retained if a Government will not provide the people with the information on which they have made a decision? How can there be accountability and democratic government if they will not provide Members of Parliament with that information so that they can vote in a particular way?

Jack Straw: My hon. Friend anticipates my next point. Should the principles that apply to private individuals and corporations in respect of legal professional privilege

William Cash: Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

Jack Straw: I want to make some progress first.
	Should those principles apply to Government, or are there such differences in the nature of Government that we should make an exception to that general rule? I do not suggest that, for many if not most purposes, the nature of Government is comparable to that of a private individual or corporation; and because we live in a democracy, Governments must be significantly more accountable for their actions than private individuals or corporationsand rightly so. But Governments, Ministers and senior officials need legal advice in the same way as private individuals and corporations. Ministers have an overwhelming duty to act lawfully, and, as I know from my time at the Home Office, Governments are frequently parties in legal actions. I therefore suggest that the same considerations apply in this particular instance.
	Those arguments, moreover, have been accepted by the House as a whole. The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy referred to freedom of information. I well remember the great debates on freedom of information, because it was my party that promised at the time of the 1997 general election that we would introduce a freedom of information Actand my party that introduced the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which provides a far more extensive right of disclosure than exists in virtually any other European country outside Scandinavia.
	We had many debates at that time about the balance between disclosure and the public interest in non-disclosure so that government could continue. That was always going to be an issue. Big questions were raised about the extent to which background papers available to Ministers, such as Cabinet Committee papers, should be made available. But I do not recall, and I have checked carefully today, a single occasion on which there was any objection to the exemption in respect of legal professional privilegewhat became section 42 of the Actor, more directly, in respect of what became section 35(1)(c), concerning the provision of advice by any of the Law Officers or any request for the provision of such advice. There was consensus throughout the House, and in the other place, that provision of such advice ought to be protected.

William Cash: The Foreign Secretary should bear it in mind that the Attorney-General is not a mere lawyer, and that the Government are not a mere client. The right hon. Gentleman's analogy with legal professional privilege is, I think, gravely defective. Does he not agree that the Attorney-General is in a unique position, in that he is personally accountable for giving advice of this kind? He is not collectively responsible even to the Cabinet, and he is accountable to Parliament. That lies at the heart of much of what we are discussing today.

Jack Straw: I certainly agree with that. As I have said, I am not arguing that Governments are in the same position as private individuals or private corporations. I am arguing, however, that if government is to operate effectively, legal professional privilege is essential. As the hon. Gentleman knows all too well, were he ever to become a Law Officer in a future Conservative Government, it would be essential to his operation on behalf of his client. At least, the hon. Member for Beaconsfield accepts that.
	The construction of the Freedom of Information Act reflects the distinction between legal professional privilege in general and advice from Law Officers, or a request for such advice, in particular; but I argue on both bases. As I have said, the argument was accepted by all parties in Parliament, and it has also been accepted by leaders of the Bar. Those of us who keep in touch with our former colleagues in the Bar Council, its professional body, know that it is not slow in coming forward to criticise the Government when it disagrees with us. It does that frequently. I therefore hope that weight will be attached to the views of its chairman, Stephen Irwin QC, who went on record nine days ago to say:
	It is of great importance that confidential advice should remain open to Government.
	If future Governmentswhether Labour, Conservative or whateverfeel that confidential legal advice on matters of major importance might be made public they may not ask for that advice when they need to, or may not reveal all the facts to their advisers.
	Were this advice to be published, it would leave future Governments of whatever hue in difficulty when it comes to obtaining confidential legal advice on major matters of public or international law. That would clearly be against the public interest.
	Mr. Irwin added:
	Whether you talk to his political opponents, his political friends, judges or anybody in the law, what is completely clear is that the Attorney-General has enormous integrity and great determination to support the rule of law.
	Those of us who know our right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General know that that testimonial is entirely deserved. Yes, the man is independent, and rightly so. Yes, he quite often tells us that which we may not wish to hear, but in doing so, he is upholding the finest traditions of his office and defending the interests of Parliament.
	To the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy, let me say that it is one thing to argue that lawyers sometimes disagree among themselves. We have learned this afternoon that they do, and as a former member of their profession I must say, Thank God they do. Far fewer lawyers would be employed if they always agreed. That is the gravamen of what the hon. Gentleman said this afternoon, but he also suggested that the Attorney-General was disagreeing with himselfthat he could somehow have presented the House with a clear statement of his conclusions, yet his advice would have been wholly contrary to that. He knows that that is completely untrue. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield nodded in affirmation when I read out the testimonial about the Attorney-General, recognising his integrity and professionalism. If the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy is not arguing that the Attorney-General is disagreeing with himself, what the devil is he arguing?

Elfyn Llwyd: I speak as a member of the Bar, and I have the highest regard for the Attorney-General. In no circumstances would I impugn his integrity. What I am saying is that he is gagged.

Jack Straw: That, too, challenges his integrity. Decisions about the release of the Attorney-General's advice are a matter for the Attorney-General. I hope that, on reflection, the hon. Gentleman will withdraw that insinuation as well.

William Cash: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Foreign Secretary has just alleged that the disclosure of the Attorney-General's advice is a matter for the Attorney-General, and he implied that it was a matter for him alone. As you well know, page 389 of Erskine May clearly states that the question of whether the Attorney-General's opinion may be cited in debates or otherwise is exclusively a matter for the Ministers concernedthat is, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary.

Madam Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order for the Chair; it is a point for debate.

Jack Straw: I shall now give way to the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell).

Peter Tapsell: It seems to me, as a layman, that the Foreign Secretary, as a lawyer, is complicating what is essentially a simple issue. Nobody denies that the Government are entitled not to reveal the advice that they receive from the Attorney-General, but they have chosen in this case to make public a very considerable part of that advice. Given that they have done so, it is difficult to understand the legal, moral or even political basis on which the Foreign Secretary refuses to give the whole of that advice.

Jack Straw: In a sense, the hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, but as he knows, some documents are summaries of considerations and others are not written for publication. Everybody knows that, if they are being truthful. Such documents are about examining the issues, and if they were not protected by legal professional privilege or by the rule protecting the publication of Law Officers' advice generally, it would not be possible for Ministers to get from the Law Officers the explicit, frank and honest advice that we receive.

Several hon. Members: rose

Jack Straw: I shall take some interventions in a moment, but I want to make some progress first.
	Throughout the intense public debate about whether the United Kingdom should contemplate military action, which extended from March 2002 until this House made its decision on 18 March last year, two questions were understandably intertwined. The first was whether it was right politically to threaten, and if necessary to take, military action against the Saddam regime; the second was, if so, whether there was a legal basis for doing so. Both questions gave rise to the issue of the authority of the United Nations, to which the United Kingdom has always been profoundly committed. We played a key role in getting the United Nations Security Council to look again at the issue of Iraq in autumn 2002. Along with our permanent representative in New York, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, and my political director, Sir Peter Ricketts, I negotiated virtually every line and every word of the resolution that became resolution 1441, which was passed on 8 November 2002. I therefore know its text, and I know its negotiating history.
	There were many hours of intensive argument about the detail of that resolution. Significantly, however, there was remarkably little debate about the preambulatory paragraph, which claimed and asserted that Iraq posed a threat to international peace and security by reason of its non-compliance with the resolution, its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and its long-range missile systems. Nor was there any argument about the assertion at the beginning of the operative paragraphs that Iraq had been in, and remained in, material breach of its obligations. To pick up on an issue raised by one of the many lawyers whom the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy mentioned, nor was there any argument as to whether UN Security Council resolution 678the original resolutionwas still in force. Resolution 1441 dealt with that issue explicitly: it was still in force.
	Instead, the argument in the Security Council centredas it did here, in many wayson whether the resolution that became 1441 would provide sufficient further authority for military action if it proved necessary, or whether a second resolution would be required. In headlines, though, the issue was more complex than that. The debate, in advance of resolution 1441, was written up as an issue of automaticity. In the event, those who were pressing heavily for a second resolution backed away from that demand. At the same time, the resolution provided no automaticity. Instead, we agreed unanimously to a process that placed obligations on Iraq: a full and final declaration, and complete co-operation with the inspectors on substance as well as appearance. Further material breaches were very clearly defined by operative paragraph 4. Operative paragraph 12 defined the process by which the Security Council would come together to consider the matter if further material breaches were disclosed under operative paragraphs 4 or 11. If so, operative paragraph 13 made it very clear that serious consequencesin other words, military actionwould follow.
	At every stage, right up to the decision that was taken on 18 March last year, the Government's position was that we would much prefer to have a second resolution. We went to enormousif abortivelengths to secure a second resolution, and I attended ministerial meetings of the Security Council four times between the end of January and 7 March. I also made it consistently clear that there was no requirement for a second resolution. As colleagues on both sides of the House will recall, on the first occasion that we debated resolution 144125 November 2002and on every subsequent occasion, the question of whether we needed a second resolution arose, and legitimately so. Time and again, I spelled out the negotiating history and said that we would prefer a second resolution, but that we did not need one.
	By 17 March last year, in the light of the breakdown of negotiations on a second resolution, and in the light of clear further material breaches by the Iraqi regimeno one in the Security Council or in the House argued about the fact that it had broken both the tests in operative paragraph 4the Cabinet recommended to Parliament that military action should be taken. We did not publish the Attorney-General's advice to the Government, but I should point outI hope that the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy will think about itthat the Attorney-General's advice in respect of military action has been published on no occasion whatsoever that we can identify.
	Although we did not publish that advice, we did two things that we thought would help the House in setting out the legal position as the Government saw it. First, the Attorney-General set out in a statement his conclusions on the matter. Secondly, I wrote a detailed five-page letter to the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee about the legal basis for the use of force. In it, I said explicitly that resolution 1441 does not provide automaticity, but that that
	does not, however, mean that no further action can be taken without a new resolution of the Council.
	The letter proceeded to spell out why we believed that taking further military action without a second resolution was entirely justified legally.
	That was the basis of the advice that we received. It was made available to this House via a note in the Vote Office, and, in addition, I wrote to every Member on both sides of each House, setting out the text of the Attorney-General's statement and my five-page letter. Let us be clear: many countries took the same view as the United States and the United Kingdom. Australia, Japan, Bulgaria, Spain, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Korea and many others took exactly the same position as we did in respect of the law and the need to take military action.

Alex Salmond: A few minutes ago, the Foreign Secretary said that the question of publication was a matter for the Attorney-General. That view was challenged. Would the Foreign Secretary care to explain and revisit the argument that he advanced?

Elfyn Llwyd: What about page 389 of Erskine May?

Jack Straw: I am familiar with Erskine May, but I should tell the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond)he has not been in government; I amthat it is utterly improbable that a Minister would publish legal advice from the Attorney-General without the authority of the Attorney-General or the Solicitor-General. I have never known that to happen, and I do not believe it ever would.

Several hon. Members: rose

Jack Straw: I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (David Winnick).

David Winnick: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is rather odd that the very same people who used the absence of a second resolution as an excuse not to support military intervention opposed the liberation of Kuwait, in respect of which there was no ambiguity whatsoever about the Security Council resolution? I do not question the fact that they are anti-Saddam, but every time action is taken against Saddambe it the liberation of Kuwait, sanctions or the liberation of Iraq itselfthey make every possible excuse not to end one of the most notorious tyrannies since 1945.

Jack Straw: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend on this issue. We have to be judged by our actions and the consequences of our decisions, as well as by our words.
	I should tell the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy that all the resolutions were made available to the House in Command Papers. My dossier was published, and every single word in it was public and accurate. If he looks at resolutions 678 and 687 in their entirety, he will see that they were not confined to authorising legal action in respect of the removal of the Saddam regime from Kuwait; they also gave wider authority. That wider authority of resolutions 678 and 687 was revived by resolution 1441.

Jeremy Corbyn: The Foreign Secretary has given an interesting build-up to the passage of resolution 1441 but says that it made various assertions about Iraq's real, present and credible threat of weapons of mass destruction. The weapons inspectorate was there, so can the Foreign Secretary explain why Hans Blix was denied the further two months that he requested to continue the inspection? What response does the Foreign Secretary have to make to the Iraq survey group's non-finding of any weapons of mass destructiongiven that we were all told that the reasons for the war were weapons of mass destruction and a real, present and credible threat from Iraq?

David Winnick: Why did he oppose the liberation of Kuwait?

Jack Straw: It was not just the Government who were telling my hon. Friend. The whole international community believed that Saddam posed a threat to international peace and security by the proliferation of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and long-range missile systems. Russia did not rely on a dossier from the United Kingdom Government. Neither did China, Germany or France. The whole international community reached the conclusion it did from the evidencein particular, year after year of non-compliance by Saddam Hussein that was charted to the Security Council in the 173 pages of a 29-chapter document that Dr. Blix put before the Security Council on 6 March.
	I invite my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) and other hon. Members to examine Command Papers 5769 and 5785, which I laid before the House in February and March last year. They set out the case and include the speeches that I made before the Security Council. I relied not on direct intelligence but on facts shared with everybody elseincluding the fact that after 12 years, Saddam was still refusing active compliance with the inspectors. As Dr. Blix said in his report of 27 January, it was a game of catch as catch can.
	Of 29 separate clusters identified by Dr. Blix almost six weeks later, he was explicit that in the cluster relating to anthrax, 10,000 litres of anthrax were unaccounted for. His words, not mine, were that there was a substantial presumption that material was still in Iraq and still active and could be used. When one put together all the publicly available facts and the behaviour that we could see with our own eyes, there was substantial evidence of further material breaches by Iraq.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North asked why we did not give the inspectors more time. That decision had to be made by the Security Council and GovernmentsDr. Blix never suggested otherwiseon the basis of earlier Security Council resolutions, not on the evidence of the inspectors, as to whether or not Saddam's regime had been given enough time.

David Winnick: He was given 12 years.

Jack Straw: Saddam was given 12 years and also overran all the time limits specified in resolution 1441.

Dominic Grieve: We have strayed on to wider issues. Earlier, the Foreign Secretary seemed to imply that it would be impossible to publish the Attorney-General's advice without his consent. While I appreciate that one should always ask the Attorney-General to agree, perhaps the Foreign Secretary concurs that ultimately, such advice becomes the property of the Government. It is for the Government to decide whether or not they wish to publish. That must be the position.

Jack Straw: The hon. Gentleman is rightpublication is ultimately for the Government. [Interruption.] Sure. If it was published by a Minister, of course it is a Government document in the end. In practice, one would have to seek the opinion of the Attorney-General. In practice, the idea that one would publish such advice without the Attorney-General's approval is so distant as to be wholly unlikely.

George Foulkes: Has my right hon. Friend ever asked the opponents of the war what they believe Saddam Hussein used to invade Iran and Kuwait and to kill hundreds of thousands of people at Halabja?

Jack Straw: That is for them to say.
	I am glad that we have moved on from whether or not we should dance on the head of a pin and have the legal advice made public. We accept that there was legitimate argument about the legal advice, but at the heart of this, political and moral judgments had to be made about whether or not we should go to war. We must accept the consequences of our decisions. Those who oppose military action must accept the consequences of what would have been their decisions, which would not have been the status quo.

Alex Salmond: The world would have been a safer place.

Jack Straw: The hon. Gentleman says that Iraq would have been a safer place.

Alex Salmond: And the world.

Jack Straw: Let us be absolutely clear that neither the world nor Iraq would be a safer place if Saddam Hussein had remained.

Lembit �pik: I came here to hear the justification not for the war but for the refusal by the Foreign Secretary and the Government to share the legal advice. This is not about the integrity of any individual but about the integrity in the eyes of the public of the British body politic. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it might be in the public interest on this specific occasion to share the legal advice? After all, if the outline was accurate it will simply confirm that the legal advice was consistently reflected in that which the Government have already published.

Jack Straw: I hope that the hon. Gentleman works on the basis that Ministers are not liars.

Lembit �pik: indicated assent.

Jack Straw: But the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy gave himself away. He started by saying that we should make available the legal advice, then added that we should make available the instructions as well. The hon. Gentleman's party and the Scottish and Welsh nationalists disagreed with military action in respect of the war. They now seek to make one argument after another to justify their policy. That is fair enough but they must not expect us to be party to that attempt.
	The Government have responsibilities to the House and have met them more than any previous Government in respect of military action. I came to the House and said that decisions on military action must be taken on substantive motions whereas, extraordinarily, that was never done in the past. We also made available a digest of the legal basis for the use of force, which had not been done in the past.

Elfyn Llwyd: It is a not a question of disclosing the instructions. I said that if the full advice had been published, the instructions would be there because it was upon those factual bases that the advice was drawn. That is an obvious point for any practising lawyer and quite plain. The factual bases would have to be on the face of the documents.
	The Foreign Secretary says that we introduced a smokescreen in relation to the war. I spent five minutes speaking about the legality of the war. The right hon. Gentleman has so far spent 20 minutes speaking on that aspect.

Jack Straw: Because it is at the heart of the issue. I may have misheard the hon. Gentleman but Hansard will tell us tomorrow whether his recollection or mine is correct. I thought that I heard the hon. Gentleman say that he wanted the instructions to be published as well. We have had a spirited debate about whether or not the legal advice should be published and the basis for our decision to use force against Iraq. Whatever our differences over military action, we should look forward as well as back. I am not dismissing for a second the need for clear retrospective examination of Government decisionsnot least and above all where military personnel are put in harm's way and innocent and military lives are lost.
	Along with our international partners from more than 30 countries, the Government's focus today is on working with the Iraqi people to build the safe, free and prosperous country that they deserve.
	Yesterday we saw a potentially historic step along that path. For the first time, representatives of Iraq's different communities, ethnic and religious groups have come together and agreed a common political approach for their country. The signature of the transitional administrative law is a significant Iraqi achievement. The law sets out a framework for governance during the transition and represents a landmark Iraqi consensus across a range of contentious issues.
	I am sure that the House will join me in paying tribute to all parties to that agreement. The members of the Iraqi governing council have shown great patience and fostered a spirit of consensus throughout the negotiations, which has laid the foundations for success. I also want to pay tribute to the work of Ambassadors Paul Bremer and Sir Jeremy Greenstock in facilitating the negotiations on the transitional law, and for everything they and their teams are doing to help the Iraqi people to rebuild their country.
	Sir Jeremy comes to the end of his period as a British representative on the coalition provisional authority, working directly alongside Paul Bremer, at the end of this month. He has been an outstanding diplomat and public servant, and I venture to suggest that, without his skill and ability to relate to others, the job of securing the transitional law would have been much more difficult. I pay tribute to him and to his wife, Anne, who first had to endure long periods of separation, but has more recently been in Iraq with Sir Jeremy, working particularly on women's issues.
	Looking at the detail of the transition law shows how far Iraq has come since the dark days of Saddam Hussein's rule. The law enshrines fundamental principles of human rights, including protection for the freedom of religious belief and practice, freedom of expression and a free and independent judiciary. All Iraqis will be equal in rights, and equal before the lawwithout regard to gender, sect, opinion, belief, religion or origin. The law makes provision for a national commission for human rights and it includes provision for an electoral system designed to achieve 25 per cent. representation of women in the national assemblya higher target than has been achieved in our Parliament.
	I would say to right hon. and hon. Members who were sceptical about the military action against Iraq, that none of those achievements, including a free press, an independent judiciary, recognition of all religionsSunni and Shi'a Kurds, as well as Arab Kurdscould possibly have been achieved without the military action that we set in place.

NOTHING

NOTHING

Menzies Campbell: We can certainly agree about the enormous contribution of Sir Jeremy Greenstock to Iraq, and, indeed, his contribution when he was our permanent representative at the United Nations. However, all the constitutional elements to which the Foreign Secretary has just referred stand no chance of implementation unless the security situation is sufficiently stable. What is the Government's present judgment on the extent to which a stable security position will obtain when the constitutional responsibilities are handed over? How many British troops will be required to be in station in Iraq and for how long?

Jack Straw: I would say to the right hon. Gentleman that the signature of the transitional administrative law is the clearest demonstration to date of the strong desire of the overwhelming majority of Iraqis to build a free, stable and democratic society there. That it happened after the appalling attacks in Ashura a week ago shows how strong is the shared determination of the people of Iraq to build a better future for themselves. That was one of the most remarkable aspects of all. Security remains the overwhelming concern of the multinational force, the Iraqi security forces and the coalition provisional authority. Part of the issue is the status of forces post-30 June. It will probably be difficult to reach agreement, but I am optimistic because all sides understand the importance of doing so.
	As regards how long our troops will remain in Iraq, it is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, and we will not be able to make judgments about that until nearer the mid-year point. I have already made it clear to the House that it will take at least this year before there is any possibility whatever of significant British troop withdrawals. The crucial point is that we committed ourselves to Iraq for the long term and we shall stay there in support of the Iraqi people. On 30 June, unless something wholly unanticipated happens, there will be a transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people.
	Other good developments are taking place. Nine months ago, I recall endless concern being expressedquite rightlyabout the lack of electricity and water supply, failures in sanitation systems, difficulties with the transport system and problems in schools and hospitals. We do not hear so much about those problems these days, because huge efforts have been made to raise the standards of those public services, not just to their level on 17 March last year, but well above the level that most Iraqis in most parts of the country have ever known. We have also helped to establish a free trade union movementI would hope that that would be welcomed on both sides of the House, but particularly on the Labour Bencheswhich never existed under Saddam.
	All that is in stark contrast to the repression, neglect and exploitation practised by Saddam's regime. The full extent of the crimes committed under that regime is only just emerging: dungeons, shackles and instruments of torture in police stations and prisons; vast qualities of documentation on those killed and persecuted by the regime; and testimonies of arbitrary imprisonment, beatings, torture, amputations and mass executions. Some 270 mass graves have been reported, containing hundreds of thousands of bodies. The fate of hundreds of thousands of missing Iraqis, and other nationals, remains unknown.
	There are many challenges ahead in Iraq, but the Iraqi people are, with international help, making good progress in rebuilding their country. Whatever our different positions on the justification for military action, our focus now should be on supporting the Iraqi people, and all those who are working with them, as they build a free, safe and prosperous Iraq at peace with its neighbours and taking its rightful place in the international community.

Dominic Grieve: I have no difficulty in associating myself with the Foreign Secretary's last remarks about the position in Iraq. In a sense, it is probably right to say that the judgment of history will determine whether the intervention of the various powers, including the UK and the US, bears fruitit was always going to be a difficult venture. Equally, I have no difficulty with the fact that I voted for the motion to use armed force. I did so based on my assessment of the position and, of course, on the material that the Government presented to the Housepresumably, the exact basis on which the Government intended hon. Members to make up their minds.
	The difficulty with the current debate is that we seem to be in danger of straying from the single essential point into much wider considerations. The motion requests the publication of the Attorney-General's advice. I fully accept what the Foreign Secretary said when he enunciated the general principles pertaining to an Attorney-General's advice; it is little different from that given by any other lawyer to his client. It is essential that the Government have access to the best legal advice, as they do through the Attorney-General, albeit that it is not always him who writes the adviceor at least provides some of the basic information or gives an opinionbecause he has a pool of talent on which to draw in supplying the advice.
	It is ordinarily important that such advice should remain confidential. The reason for the confidentiality is exactly that enunciated by the Foreign Secretary: the desirability of being able to get advice without it being published and also becauseI suspect that the right hon. Gentleman would not disagreethe Government cannot hide behind the advice of an Attorney-General. It is the Government's decisions, based on advice, that have to be taken. In the old days, the advice used to be called an opinion. It is someone's opinion, not the gospel truth, that is offered to the world. It is the best advice that an individual, having sought the opinion and help of others, can offer the Government on what may be a complex and difficult issue.
	I have no difficulty with those basic principles. I think that the Foreign Secretary accepts that the convention has not required that previous advice from those who held the office of Attorney-General must never be published. The pages of parliamentary history show that that has happened on a number of occasions. Interestingly enough, it has generally happened when a problem about the legality or appropriateness of subsequent Government action has arisen. Matters such as the Archer Shee case and the Belfast riots seem to me to fall roughly into that category.

Jack Straw: I remember them well.

Dominic Grieve: They may be a long time ago, but one virtue of our parliamentary tradition is that what happens in Parliament is based on precedent. I hope that the Foreign Secretary is not about to consign that tradition to the bin, as it is very desirable. The problems faced by our forefathers tend to replicate themselves in the problems that we face. There is nothing new under the sun, so the past is a good place to look when one needs to know the best way to proceed.
	The Foreign Secretary has argued that he does not want to publish the Attorney-General's advice in this case. I disagree with that decision. Before the right hon. Gentleman gets hot under the collar, I hope that he will listen to some straightforward arguments about why the advice should be published.
	First, we must look at the circumstances in which the advice came to be given, and the use that the Government have made of it. Last year, the Government faced a difficult task. The Foreign Secretary restated a few moments ago what the Government believed at that timethat military action against Iraq was necessary and that Iraq had systematically flouted a series of UN resolutions. The Government also believed that Iraq posed a regional and even global threat; at least, that was how the matter was presented to the House when it was debated here. Finally, the Government wanted to ensure that Iraq was stopped. They took the view that UN resolutions already agreed allowed action to be taken and that there was no need to go back to the Security Council to secure a further resolution.
	To achieve that, the Government put out a great deal of information. Instead of acting first and debating the result in Parliament afterwards, they decided to take the novel step of seeking Parliament's sanction and approval for the action that they intended to take. I thought that that approach was commendable, and I welcomed it at the time.
	The Government put into the public domain a mass of information that, generally speaking, would not in the past have been seen by parliamentarians or the public. There were dossiers, and information about Iraq's capability in respect of weapons of mass destruction; also made available were assessments of the risks that Iraq posed, and of previous UN resolutions and the way that they had been broken, as reported by Dr. Blix. The Government also made it clear that they had gone to the Attorney-General before asking Parliament to come to this very important decision. Although the Government were not about to publish the Attorney-General's advice, they stated that they would publish a summary. That summary was published, and was available to hon. Members when the time came to make our decision.

Llew Smith: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we did not go to war because Saddam flouted UN resolutions? Had that been the reason, I assume that we would have gone to war with Israel many years ago, although I would not have supported that. We went to war with Iraq for one reasonbecause it had weapons of mass destruction. At least, that is what we were told.

Dominic Grieve: There lies the nub of the issue. When I came to consider whether it was proper to take military action against Iraq, I was not shadow Attorney-General. My assessment was influenced by Iraq's systematic flouting of UN resolutions, dating from the end of the Gulf war with Kuwait. The armistice at the end of that war contained conditions that were simply not observed. I was greatly influenced by the systematic violation of those agreements. However, for many Labour Back Benchers and other hon. Members, the critical questionand I accept that it was very importantwas whether the situation was grave enough to merit military action.
	Clearly, the question of proportionality arose, and I remember the words real and present danger being bandied about. Was Iraq a real and present danger as well as being in breach of the resolutions? As the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Llew Smith) says, the issue of WMD featured very largely in the debate. Although I did not think that the WMD issue should be taken in isolation, it was clear from the debate that for many hon. Members it was of critical importance.

Stephen McCabe: My recollection is that a number of senior Conservatives were extremely anxious to go to war, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman will satisfy my curiosity about a particular question. It appears that publication in full of the Attorney-General's advice is now crucial for the hon. Gentleman. He is a lawyer, and he was considering these crucial matters very deeply, so why did it not occur to him, or any of his senior colleagues, to request full publication of the advice at the time?

Dominic Grieve: I confess that I wonder where the hon. Gentleman has been for the past six months.

Stephen McCabe: Why did not the Opposition request full publication at the time?

Dominic Grieve: I had no reason to seek the publication of the Attorney-General's entire advice at the time, because the Government placed before the House a body of material that stated that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. However, two things have happened since then that have caused us to have this debate, which would not have happened otherwise. First, the weapons have not been found; and, secondly, evidence has emerged that calls into question the Government's competence in handling the intelligence material in relation to WMD. We know that because we discovered in the debate on Lord Hutton's report that the Secretary of State for Defence knew in March 2003 knew that the term WMD referred to battlefield weapons only, but that the Prime Minister apparently did not.

Patrick McLoughlin: My hon. Friend has offered two reasons why we should see the advice in full, but matters have moved fast. I remind him that there is another reason. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), the former Secretary of State for International Development, was a member of the Cabinet that took the decision to go to war, but she now says that there was something fishy about the decision. I cannot remember that happening in the past. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. McCabe) wants to know what has changed, but he should ask those who sat around the Cabinet table at the time. Therefore, does my hon. Friend not agree that we are right to ask the questions that we are asking?

Dominic Grieve: My hon. Friend is right. I was about to move on to questions about the actions of that former Cabinet Minister since her resignation. Moreover, we know that the legality of the decision to take military action appears to have been the subject of some controversy, to say the least. I do not mean that as a criticism of the Government, but we know that the second permanent legal adviser to the Foreign Office, Mrs. Wilmshurst, was so concerned that she resigned over the issue.
	That is not to say that she was right and the Attorney-General wrong, as it is possible for people to have different opinions. However, we are entitled to ask whether the Attorney-General was given the right information on which to base his advice. That is the critical issue in this case, and the Government cannot avoid it. It may be that the Government were misled by the intelligence services. Their claim about WMD may have been made in complete good faith, As a result, the Attorney-General, again in complete good faith, may have based his advice on it. If that is the case, it may reflect on the competence of the intelligence servicesintelligence is a fairly murky areabut it would not necessarily reflect badly on the Government and it would not make the decision to go to war unlawful. We did not have the correct intelligence because Saddam Hussein consistently denied and obfuscated the true position over the previous months and years. It would be useful to have the entire picture because it might well exonerate the Government of anything more than making a mistake.
	Alternatively, the conspiracy theory is that the Government knew that the evidence on weapons of mass destruction was nothing like as good as the way in which they presented it to the House, but chose for their own reasonsperhaps they were particularly concerned about their Back Benchersto deny their Back Benchers and, for all I know, the Attorney-General access to it. That is why the Attorney-General's advice, which the Government specifically relied upon to present their case to the House to justify the legal basis for military action, is so relevant.
	I hope that the Foreign Secretary is willing to listen with an open mind. Subject to the problem that the Attorney-General's advice might contain either classified material, which would have to be edited, or references to secret material that the Government have still not been able to present to the public, it is entirely in the Government's interest to make the advice available. The Government used parts of the advice to persuade the electorate and Parliament. One year later, they have got themselves into a position where, possibly through no fault of their own, elements of the factual opinion that they gave have been called into question on valid grounds, and supplying the entire advice would provide reassurance. In that light, I must say to the Foreign Secretary that it strikes me as being fairly reasonable for the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) to table his motion.

Elfyn Llwyd: I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument fairly carefully and agree with him, but it is highly unlikely that the Attorney-General's advice contains anything secret. If that were the case, the Katharine Gun case would not have collapsed because the judge would have allowed a public interest immunity certificate.

Dominic Grieve: We may be entering the realm of speculation by discussing the collapse of the Katharine Gun case. The hon. Gentleman's point is a little far-fetched because we do not know why it collapsedwe were told that there was a lack of evidence. I do not know whether there was a lack of evidence, whether the Government had material that they would have liked to have put before the court but could not because it was subject to PII or whether the Government had material covered by PII that they did not want to put before the court but would have been forced to put in front of the judge.

Stephen McCabe: I want to return to the notion that the Government may have deliberately sought to dupe an array of people in the build up to war. Were members of the Privy Council such as the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) and the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) so slow and inept that they could not see possible areas of doubt? Were they so in love with the idea of war that they did not want to consider the matter? What is it about the position now that was not remotely apparent to any of them at the time? This issue is difficult for all of us, but at the time they were in no doubt about the information that they were receiving. Apart from the political opportunity, which we have heard about, why have all the doubts surfaced subsequently? Why did members of the Privy Council not entertain any doubts at the time?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That was a very long intervention.

Dominic Grieve: As I said earlier, the hon. Gentleman does not seem to have kept abreast of what has happened since. When the debate took place, it was clear that Iraq had flouted the UN resolutionsI suspect that no hon. Member in the Chamber this afternoon could suggest that it had not flouted UN resolutions because it did so consistently. The obfuscation, the denial and the expulsion of the inspectors in 1998 form a pattern, and each of those events might well have justified taking military action at the time that it occurred. I can think of all sorts of other things that Iraq did not do: it did not hand back the Kuwaiti art treasures and it never provided a full list of those it had deported and murdered; the list is endless. Saddam Hussein was a monster who behaved monstrously before, during and after the war against Kuwait. I have no regrets about having seen him removed from power.
	The issue was difficult for the House. We were told that the pressing need to take military action rather than relying on other means was the existence of weapons of mass destruction, which provided a real and present danger that had to be addressed then and there and not by any other prolonged means. That argument influenced me when I considered how I should vote. I was comfortable in voting for the resolution provided that the Government were acting honestly with the House, and I certainly have no reason to think that they were not. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. McCabe) may remember that it was pointed out to the Prime Minister that, if only people trusted him more on other matters, it would be easier for them to trust him on that important matter, where we all think that trust was required.

John Randall: My hon. Friend and I took different views about military action at the time, and I did so with a heavy heart. In March last year, I asked the Prime Minister for the full evidence because many of my constituents and I wanted to be persuaded by the Government. We wanted the evidence to know that the Government were doing the right thing, and that argument remains. We need the evidence to persuade people to trust our Government.

Dominic Grieve: I agree with my hon. Friend. Other Conservative Members also voted another way as a matter of conscience and were given every allowance to do soI fully respected their position. I agree that there is a need to restore public trust. It is in nobody's interest for trust not to exist, and we will all lose in those circumstances. The belief that there are short-term party political advantages from a decline in trust in politicians in general is frankly a mistake. A loss of trust will ultimately affect the entire system of governance in this country and do none of us any good.
	The Government's reliance on the advice, the fact that they published a summary of it and the fact that it was intimately linked to the information that was available at the time and on which they based their view seems to make publication desirable. At the end of the day, however, it is their decision, not mine.

William Cash: Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that there was a pragmatic reason for the release of the summary? Having been intimately involved in those matters, perhaps he will take it from me that the necessity for producing a summary opinion had much to do with getting Labour Members of Parliament through the Lobby. Furthermore, the alternative in the absence of any such summary would have been a deluge of opinions from Matrix and other chambers, which would have been in the hands of those who were opposed to the war, and the nation would have heard them on the airwaves if they were broadcast nationally on that day.

Dominic Grieve: I am sure that that analysis is correct. There is nothing wrong with what the Government did, and it was all the more desirable for them to take the unusual step of publishing a summary.
	Rather than getting agitated by what, in the light of what has happened, is a perfectly sensible suggestion, the Government should go away and consider the matter carefully. It is in their interest and that of good government generally that the advice should be published. If there are compelling reasons why it should not be published that go beyond the reasons of convention, the Foreign Secretary should explain them, rather than saying simply that convention does not allow publication and then giving us an interesting speech on several issues that are not germane to the point that we are discussing this afternoon. I wish the Government every success in what they are trying to do in Iraq, but I also think that it would be wise for the Government to publish the entire advice from the Attorney-General.

Llew Smith: To save time and prevent unnecessary interventions, I shall say straight away that I was among those who voted against the war. However, I oppose Saddam Hussein now, just as I opposed him and demonstrated against his rule in the 1980s. I find it ironic that some of his greatest critics today were some of his greatest friends in the 1980s. I remind the House, as I said in an intervention, that I opposed the arms trade with Saddam Hussein and other evil regimes. I remember some of the criticism that we were subject to at the time. We were told that if we continued our campaign we would put British jobs in the arms industry at risk. We ignored that criticism because we thought that the campaign against selling arms to regimes such as Saddam's was more important than putting at risk some jobs in the UK arms industry. In saying that, I accept that right hon. and hon. Members disagree about whether we should have gone to war.
	Perhaps I was naive to assume that we could disagree on whether to go to war but that we could still agree that all the information that the Government received before taking the decision to go to war should be provided to hon. Members and to the public. Sadly, that is not the case. However, I believe that the Government have a moral obligation to provide that information, especially to the families of those who died as a result of the war. That obligation extends to us all, so that we can decide whether that act of war was legal. I am not a recent convert to that argument and I have not jumped on the bandwagon. Indeed, I am one of those who have consistently posed such questions to the Government over the past 12 months.
	On the day following the House of Commons vote on the war, the Prime Minister stated:
	We want to ensure that any post-conflict authority in Iraq is endorsed and authorised by a new United Nations resolution.[Official Report, 19 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 932.]
	But many of us who voted against the war contended that we did not even have an existing UN Security Council resolution that endorsed a military invasion and that it was an illegal war. In reply to a question of mine in May 2003, I was informed that Sir Jeremy Greenstock had said, when he spoke at the UN:
	There is no 'automaticity' in this resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion as required in . . . Resolution 1441.[Official Report, 7 May 2003; Vol. 404, c. 739W.]
	We all know that no second resolution was ever put to the United Nations.

Alex Salmond: The hon. Gentleman is well versed in the statement that was produced by France, Germany and Russia thereafter, which emphasised that that was their understanding of the resolution that they had voted for.

Llew Smith: I support such sentiments and I suspect that it is one of the reasons why a second resolution was not put to the UN at the time.
	Many hon. Members today wonder how a year ago they were able to vote for a resolution for war that asserted that this House:
	recognises that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and long range missiles, and its continuing non-compliance with Security Council Resolutions, pose a threat to international peace and security. [Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 760.]
	That was false. As Dr. David Kay, an ex-CIA agent and the former head of the Iraq survey group, which was set up to find the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, put it to the United States Senate in January this year, after he resigned:
	We were almost all wrong.
	We now need to know whether Ministers simply proved to be very bad judges of geopolitics, stubbornly refusing to listen to the millions who marched against the war a year ago, orworsedeliberately distorted the evidence, cherry-picked the details that suited their case for invading Iraq, and pressed the Attorney-General to provide an opinion that endorsed a political decision already taken two years earlier to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam.

Stephen McCabe: I respect my hon. Friend's view on the war, although I do not agree with it. Is he seriously suggesting that Ministers in this Labour Government deliberately set out to lie, distort and misrepresent the truth to con us all into a war? Is that really what he believes?

Llew Smith: I cannot answer that question.

Stephen McCabe: You voiced it.

Llew Smith: Where I come from, we have a quaint tradition that if someone poses a question, someone else answers. You have both posed and attempted to answer the question. You posed the question and now I shall answer

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I would gently remind the hon. Gentleman that he must use the correct parliamentary language.

Llew Smith: My hon. Friend posed the question and I shall answer it. My answer is that I cannot answer his question truthfully until we receive the information that some of us have demanded and is the reason for today's debate. If we receive the information in the weeks or months ahead, I shall be in a far better position to answer my hon. Friend's question, but until that happens I have to say that I just do not know.
	The sequential refusals of the Attorney-General in the other place, and Ministers in this House, to release the full legal opinion have prevented both Houses of Parliament from finding the truth about how the war was started. I have tabled many questions on the legality of the warprobably more than any other Member, as the Minister will accept. I have requested that allI emphasise the word allthe information that the Government received should be in the hands of Members of Parliament and the public. Sadly, a Labour Government who came to power in 1997 committed to open government have failed to keep their promise. The Government's responses to my requests for information have included No and Information withheld. The Government have also responded that it is
	not the practice to disclose the content of confidential discussions with foreign Governments.[Official Report, 24 March 2003; Vol. 402, c. 21W.]
	On another occasion, they said that the
	substance of advice which the Law Officers may have given to Government is not publicly disclosed.[Official Report, 26 March 2003; Vol. 402, c. 236W.]
	I have also been told that
	information is withheld under exemptions 2 and 4 . . . of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information.[Official Report, 6 October 2003; Vol. 410, c. 1114W.]

Bill Rammell: For the sake of clarity, will my hon. Friend confirm that when he says that all information should be put into the public domain, he means that all the intelligence information on which the Government based their decision should be put into the public domain?

Llew Smith: I assumed that my hon. Friend the Minister would have known without bothering to ask that I was referring to the information that the Government received from the Attorney-General. Indeed, that is the reason for the debate. I did not ask for intelligence information or any other information that would put national security at risk. I am referring to the information that the Attorney-General provided to the Government. I see no reason why Members of the House, and indeed members of the general public, should not receive all of that information in order to be able to pass judgment on whether it was right or wrong, legal or illegal, to go to war.
	We also know from Anthony Aust, a former Foreign Office deputy legal adviser and visiting professor of international law at the London School of Economics, writing in The Guardian on 2 March, that legal advice to the then Tory Government was published in 1972
	over the Simonstown Agreement with South Africa. The treaty for the navy base obliged Britain to supply the apartheid regime with military equipment. The legal advice was published to justify the exports.
	Indeed, Ministers were becoming even more secretive, adding that even information on whether legal advice had been offered was a secret.
	In an intervention I said that I could understand that if a private individual sought legal advice, that individual had a right to determine whether the advice would remain confidential. But I repeat that a Labour Government or any other Government are not a private individual. This Labour Government were democratically elected and are therefore accountable to the people. It is not possible to have that accountability if the peoplethose who put the Government into officeare prevented from having information that determines the most important of all decisions: whether the country should go to war. I believe that Members of this House cannot take that kind of decision unless we, too, are provided with that information.
	While all this has been going on, a cloak of secrecy has been drawn over these matters. Despite the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been foundSaddam was supposed to have weapons of mass destruction that he could use within 45 minutes and that were a threat to the westno resignations have followed. Last December, I asked my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister whether, if no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, we could expect resignations at the highest levels of Government. Unfortunately, he failed to answer.
	In my opinion, the war was illegal. It was immoral, and it has resulted in a more unstable world, where terrorism is a graver threat. It was conducted on a false premisethat Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that it could use them within 45 minutes and that it was a threat to us in the west.

Menzies Campbell: Were I winding up the debate, I should be compelled to describe it as wide-ranging. But in the time available to me I shall try to focus on the issue of publication, which I understand to be the gravamen of the motion in the name of Members of Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party.
	Let me remind the House that when General Galtieri invaded the Falklands, the legal position was clear and unequivocal. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, there could be no dispute about the illegality of that act. But the military action against Iraq 12 months ago had neither such legal clarity nor unanimity, then or now. The truth is that legal opinion was then, and remains today, as controversial and divided as public opinion.
	The circumstances were and remain unique. The United Kingdom went to war on the basis of intelligence assessments, not because of an actual or even an immediately threatened act of aggression. It has been repeated again today that we went to war, the Government said, on the basis of the contention that Iraq was in breach of United Nations resolutions, and that that of itself justified military action to enforce those resolutions. That contention, if I have stated it both accurately and fairly, as I believe I have, seems to me to fail to take account of three significant legal principles.
	The first principle is that war must always be the last resort when all other diplomatic and political alternatives have been exhausted. Yet at the time of our debate on 18 March, and the military action that followed it, inspections were still continuing, and in the opinion of Dr. Blix could usefully be allowed to continue. Diplomatic and political alternatives were still available.
	The second principle is that when military action is taken, the use of force must always be proportionate to the political aims. The object of the resolutions upon which the Government rely now, and upon which they relied then, was to disarm Iraq, not to topple its Government. It is self-evident that military action for the first purpose is different in degree and extent from what is required for the second.
	The third principle is that regime change is illegal under article 2, paragraph 4, of the charter of the United Nations. Yet which of us doubts that the clear objective of the United States, with which we were associated in alliance, was regime change? Last week in Sedgefield, in a speech whose second half in particular requires careful study and consideration, the Prime Minister distanced the Government from regime change. But it cannot be avoided that we acted in concert with the United States, for which regime change was a publicly stated justification for military action.
	Those three elementslast resort, proportionality and regime changeall have legal consequences. I do not believe that any opinion seeking to examine and analyse the legal justification for military action could or should have ignored them. That is why I believe that the public are entitled to know whether the Attorney-General considered those elements, and if so what weight was attached to them.
	It is said that convention precludes publication of the Attorney-General's advice, but that principle was breached when part of the advice was published. If the principle is of such profound significance, as soon as it is breached the argument that it must be maintained in all circumstances suffers at the very least considerable damage. That principle can have been breached only because of a recognition by the Government of the special circumstances of the timespecial circumstances reflected, as the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Llew Smith) has just said, in the Government's decision to put to the House a question seeking endorsement of the decision to take military action; special circumstances indeed. But that convention is not a statutory rule. The law is not broken by publication of the Attorney-General's advice, and it must be borne in mind that conventions in our constitution are conceived of in the public interest. It is not their purpose to protect parties or Governments from scrutiny or embarrassment. So, in this case, it is my conclusion that the convention does not serve the public interest and that the public interest is best served by full disclosure. That is why the House should support the motion.

Ross Cranston: Only rarely does the House discuss matters of lawyers' law, and I am rather surprised that we are doing so this afternoon. The confidentiality of the Attorney-General's advice may be a matter that plays more in the taverns and byways of some parts of Wales, and possibly of Scotland, than in my constituency. Frankly, it has no resonance in my constituency.
	Yes, there is an interest in the security situation in Iraq because some of my constituents and some of the sons and daughters of my constituents are in that country with the United Kingdom's armed forces. There is interest in the developing democracy in Iraq and the emergence of a free press, responsible government and the interim constitution that was agreed recently. There is also some interest in what is to happen to Saddam Hussein and when he is to be tried for crimes against humanity, but there is no interest whatever in the subject of this debate. None the less, I shall address it.
	I thought the debate was to be about a specific issuethe confidentiality of the advicebut the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) strayed into the substance of that advice. I understood him to say that because we do not have the full advice we cannot understand the full legal reasoning. If that is what he was saying, let me assure him that the matter is widely canvassed in legal literature and there are extensive discussions of the various legal arguments. It is not merely a matter of an A4 sheet, as the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) claimed; a fuller memorandum to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs was published by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, which set out in detail issues such as automaticity. That advice clearly stated that we did not accept that the situation gave rise to automaticity, but that Iraq had a final opportunity, under resolution 1441, to comply with the UN resolutions but had not taken advantage of that.

Alex Salmond: That being so, we should do justice to the comments of the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell). Does not the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) find it passing strange that the published summary of the Attorney-General's advice included no consideration of such pertinent issues as proportionality in weighing up the legality or otherwise of the conflict before reaching a conclusion?

Ross Cranston: As I just said, one has to look not only at the summary of the Attorney-General's advice, but at the memorandum to members of the Foreign Affairs Committee published on 17 March, which explores in great detail the legal reasoning adopted by the Government.

Menzies Campbell: May I put a specific question to the hon. and learned Gentleman? Is it his position that the UN resolutions, including 1441, gave warrant for regime change?

Ross Cranston: The resolutions1441 in particulargave rise to an obligation that the then Iraqi Government bring themselves into compliance. The onus was on that Government to comply with the obligation to disarm. They had a final opportunity to do so, mechanisms were set up for that under 1441, but they did not comply. I shall return to that point in a moment.

Diane Abbott: My hon. and learned Friend's argument appears to be that the legality of the case for war was wholly transparent, partly because of the summary and partly because of various memorandums. But if the legal basis for going to war was as transparent as all that, why, only days before the war, was the Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Michael Boyce, still asking for a clear legal authorisation?

Ross Cranston: Because, clearly, our armed forces and our civil servants are scrupulous about complying with legal advice. I do not know the substance of the advice being sought, but two issues are, unfortunately, sometimes confused: the legality of taking action andwhether or not the action is legalthe need to comply with what was set out in the Geneva protocols and is now incorporated in the statute of the International Criminal Court, namely, that one cannot commit crimes against humanity, war crimes and so on.

Alex Salmond: The admiral can help us, because he speculates in The Herald on 8 Marchjust yesterdaythat the impact of his questioning may have had an effect. He says:
	Now, if that caused them to go back saying 'We need our advice tightened up', I don't know.

Ross Cranston: As I said, our armed forces are scrupulous about whether or not they are acting in accordance with the law. I do not know the background, but I can well understand Lord Boyce wanting assurance on that point. On the substance of the advice, which is not the issue of the debate, I am absolutely clear, as I have told the House on a number of occasions, that the repeated failure of the then Iraqi Government to comply with a series of resolutions dating back to the first Gulf warresolutions 678, 687 and a number of others, leading to resolution 1441gave rise to the obligation unconditionally to co-operate, which Saddam Hussein failed to do.
	Let me come, first, to the technical issue that is the substance of the motion: the obligation to publish the advice. In private law matters, there is both confidentialitythe lawyer's obligation to maintain the confidence of the clientand the separate evidential rule, which involves legal professional privilege, one aspect of which is that one cannot get access to legal advice during judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings. One cannot get access to communications between the lawyer and the client that have been used for the purpose of obtaining legal advice. The reason for that goes back to statements such as those of Lord Brougham in the early 19th century, for example, and reiterated by the chairman of the Bar Council, quoted by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary.
	I shall quote Mr. Irwin, who is the current chairman of the Bar in England and Wales:
	Were this advice to be published, it would leave future governments of whatever hue in difficulty when it comes to obtaining confidential legal advice on major matters of public or international law. That would be clearly against the public interest.
	In other words, we want our armed forces and civil servants to seek legal advice, and the protection given by the confidentiality of the advice encourages them to do so. That has always been the rationale of the confidentiality of advice, although one may question it. In my former guise, I was not always persuaded by the notion that legal professional privilege should be absolute. The law should recognise that there are good public policy reasons in some cases for overcoming legal professional privilege, but that is the general rule.
	In the public sector, there are additional features. There is the provision in section 35(1)(c) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which my right hon. Friend mentioned. There is the provision in the ministerial code, and there is the convention. It is a convention, not an absolute rule, and it is recognised in Erskine May. The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy quoted Edwards's The Law Officers of the Crown. It is a convention widely recognised that the Law Officers' legal advice remains confidential. There are exceptions; it is not an absolute rule. There is the case of the Belfast riots in 1865, and there are other exceptions. In recent times, Law Officers' legal advice was published as a result of legal proceedings in the Factortame case and the Scott inquiry, but good public policy justifications are needed to publish in defiance of the convention.
	The argument that it might be necessary to publish the Attorney-General's advice in specific legal proceedings so that people can defend themselves in criminal cases has already been used in the debate. Several Greenpeace volunteers are appearing before the magistrates court as a result of occupying tanks at the Marchwood military docks in February 2003. They want to argue a defence of necessity and say, We were trying to prevent an illegal war, so we need access to the Attorney-General's advice.
	Mention has also been made of the Katharine Gun case, although if one reads the statement by the Director of Public Prosecutions carefully, one finds that the abandonment of that prosecution had nothing whatsoever to do with the Attorney-General's advice. The Greenpeace activists are barking up the wrong tree, and I suggest that they get better legal advice if they think that the Attorney-General's opinion would provide them with any defence to the charges of aggravated trespass or criminal damage because there must be some proximity between the Attorney-General's advice and the defence of necessity. Anyhow, they may make the application and can seek judicial review if the magistrates refuse to order the advice to be produced.
	We have heard a second argument about the situation somehow undermining the position of the parliamentary ombudsman, who, as I understand it from press reports, has sought the advice as a result of an application from The Guardian. It would be deeply ironic if the advice were made available to her but not to the House, and I frankly do not think that she should have access to the advice. I cannot understand the legal justification for making the advice available to her, but that is another argument, which frankly is not especially relevant today.
	The third argument, which is a serious argument, is that we must understand the factual basis on which the advice was given. Serious commentators such as Professor Peter Hennessy have commented on the matter. Professor Hennessy said:
	That opinion turned largely on what intelligence told Whitehall about the degree to which Saddam Hussein and his weaponry posed a danger to other people's nationals other than his own.
	The right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife was reported last week in The Guardian as saying:
	The reliability of the advice is directly related to quality of the facts on which it is based.
	The argument is serious, but it can be easily resolved because the facts on which the advice was based were perfectly clear. The facts are set out in Security Council resolution 1441, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary spoke about the way in which each of the resolution's words was carefully negotiated.
	The preamble to resolution 1441 sets out two facts: Iraq's breach of Security Council's disarmament resolutions over 12 years since 1990, and its failure to comply with inspection regimes under those resolutions. As the preamble says, the Security Council was deploring
	further that Iraq repeatedly obstructed immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access to sites designated by . . . UNSCOM.
	It also says that the Security Council recognises
	the threat Iraq's non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security.
	The obligations on Iraq are clearly set out in the substance of resolution 1441. Paragraph 1 says that Iraq is in material breach. As I have said in previous debates, that is the most serious kind of breach because it may give rise to the breach of a treaty. Paragraph 2 gives Iraq
	a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations.
	Paragraph 9 puts the important obligation on Iraq to
	cooperate immediately, unconditionally, and actively with UNMOVIC and the IAEA.
	The resolution is perfectly clear.

Colin Challen: I have been listening carefully to my hon. and learned Friend. I am not an expert in international law, but surely we should take into account the context of resolution 1441. The American delegation to the United Nations said that 1441 would not lead to military action. Indeed, it would have been difficult to secure unanimous agreement for that resolution if the French or Germans had believed otherwise. It is odd to build an argument on the basis of what happened on that fateful day in the United Nations.

Ross Cranston: Resolution 1441 imposed a unanimous obligation on Iraq, saying that it was in material breach, but had a final opportunity to comply with its obligations inter alia by co-operating immediately, unconditionally, and actively. Paragraph 13 goes on to say that
	the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations.

Alice Mahon: I think that my hon. and learned Friend is going to conclude that 1441 gave the green light to go to war. Why, then, did the much praised public servant, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, make a statement outside the UN in which he said that there was no automaticity about our going to war in that resolution?

Ross Cranston: I touched on that earlier, when I said that there was no automaticity, but that Iraq had to achieve compliance immediately, unconditionally, and actively.
	Dr. Blix produced three important and detailed reports for the Security Council, the first of which was published on 27 January. One remembers that report in particular because in it Dr. Blix used the following expression:
	Inspection is not a game of 'catch as catch can'.
	He pointed out that the obligation in paragraph 9 of resolution 1441 was to co-operate actively. In his report of 14 February, he referred again to the need to co-operate and said:
	Although I can understand that it may not be easy for Iraq in all cases to provide the evidence needed, it is not the task of the inspectors to find it. Iraq itself must squarely tackle this task and avoid belittling the questions.
	Finally, in his March report, Dr. Blix said:
	It is obvious that, while the numerous initiatives which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some long-standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as 'active', or even 'pro-active', these initiatives 34 months into the resolution cannot be said to constitute 'immediate' co-operation.
	In other words, Dr. Blix was saying that Iraq had not complied with its obligations under 1441.
	The issue of whether or not weapons of mass destruction existed is beside the point as far as 1441 is concerned, because under that resolution the onus is on Iraq to demonstrate that it does not have such weapons. I remind the House that in the preamble to resolution 1483, passed after the conflict had finished on 22 May 2003, the Security Council reaffirmed
	the importance of the disarmament of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and of eventual confirmation of the disarmament of Iraq.
	Paragraph 11, the substantive part of that resolution, reaffirms
	that Iraq must meet its disarmament obligations.
	Even after the conflict, the Security Council said that Iraq must disarm. The fact that weapons of mass destruction have not been found so far is clearly beside the point.

Llew Smith: How can weapons of mass destruction be beside the point, given that they were the reason why we went to war?

Ross Cranston: It is clear, in terms of 1441, that we took armed action because Iraq had not demonstrated that it did not have weapons of mass destruction. That is the point. The onus was on Iraq to demonstrate that it did not have them, but it failed to do so.
	I was sad to see that the other day the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy, supported by the hon. Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr (Adam Price), signed up to the petition to the International Criminal Court on UK war crimes. That petition is entirely misconceived. It confuses the earlier notion of the illegality of the war with that of how any war is conducted in relation to the Geneva protocols, and also suggests that we in the UK are guilty of genocide because we acted in accordance with the sanctions resolutions imposed by the United Nations. That is completely wrong.
	It is clear what the motion is all about. We cannot get away from the obvious fact that we have a legitimate disagreement in this House about the war in Iraq. The motion is one more weapon that is being used by those who opposed the war to further that cause. I completely reject the suggestion that the Attorney-General was suborned in terms of the opinion that he gave. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said, the Attorney-General is a man of the highest integrity. Before he became Attorney-General, he was a leader of the commercial Bar and chairman of the Bar Council. He is a man of the highest intelligence and integrity, and the suggestion that he was manipulated to produce advice must be clearly and unequivocally rejected.
	The motion represents one more attempt to go over very old ground. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said, our major concern should be the future of a democratic state in Iraq.

William Cash: I regard it as a little odd, to say the least, that the Solicitor-General is not in her place to discuss these matters, given that she assumed such a prominent role in the Gun prosecution case and that the Attorney-General is the subject of the debate. A few days ago, I said in a letter to The Daily Telegraph that I deeply regret the fact that the Attorney-General is not in the House of Commons to answer for and to be accountable for the decisions that he takes on behalf of the nation, particularly in matters of this kind. Many people have the highest opinion of the Attorney-General, and I would concur. However, nobody is infallible. Moreover, under the conventions of the House, it isor was, until this Government took overalways the case that the Attorney-General sat in this House, for extremely good and sound reasons. I shall revert later to the role of the Attorney-General.
	I share or bear some responsibility for the Government's position because I repeatedly asked questions in the run-up to the war. I pressed especially for the Attorney-General's opinion on the legality of the war to be made available. Furthermore, on 14 March 2003, I specifically asked the Prime Minister in a parliamentary question whether he would make a statement on the legal basis for military intervention against Iraq. His initial answer was that there was a long-standing convention that legal advice to the Government remained confidential. That has often been repeated. He continued:
	We always act in accordance with international law.[Official Report, 14 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 482W.]
	Towards the end of my remarks, I shall revert to that point and speak not only about dismantling the issue of the resolutions but the philosophy that lies behind the question of what constitutes international law, what the Prime Minister thinks about that now and what he thought about it then. His speech in Sedgefield on 5 March has a great bearing on the publication of the Attorney-General's opinion.
	In the run-up to the debate on 17 March 2003, the Attorney-General published an opinion in summary, which was given to Parliament. As I said in an intervention on the Foreign Secretary, I was clear about the reason for that. It was partly pragmatic. I believe that the Labour Government were legally justified in going to war. I approved of the war, and I believe that the decision has been proved correct. As history unfolds, despite the difficulties, of which there will be more, the moral, political and legal justification for the war will become apparent. However, a veritable deluge of opinions poured out of all the international law chambers of the Middle Temple, Gray's Inn and so on. They dominated the airwaves. Professors of international law gave interviews on every television and radio station and said that the war was illegal. We also knew that our debate would be broadcast to the nation. A million people or thereabouts had marched against the war, which was a matter of intense controversy. The question that was asked most often was whether the war was legal.
	I believedI emphasise that I express a personal opinion, although others share itthat it would be highly undesirable if proceedings in the House were dominated by a deluge of opinions on only one sidethat the war was illegal. It appeared to me that it would therefore be wise for alternative opinion to be presented to the House to rectify the imbalance that would have been broadcast to the nation. Furthermore, from the Government's point of view, that would have influenced those hon. Members who were prepared to vote for the war only reluctantly and who could be persuaded if the deluge of opinion from international lawyers were counterbalanced. Those Members had a difficult choiceI am not in any way cynical about that, or unfairly critical of themand I believe that the submission of the Attorney-General's opinion in summary form had an enormous influence on the debate. I think that I am right in saying that the legality of the war was not challenged during the course of that debate. That may seem curious in retrospect, but on the whole, the fact that the Attorney-General's summary opinion had been put before the House laid the matter to rest for the time being.
	As we know, however, that has not been the case since then, and the debate on legality rumbles on. For many reasons that I have often stated, from the Front Bench during debates and in correspondence in the national press, I have repeatedly called for publication of the full opinion. The Prime Minister apparently understands the basis of that argument, because in my exchanges with him during his statement to the House on the setting up of the Butler inquiry, I explicitly suggested that the Butler committee should have a copy of the full opinion from the Attorney-General. The Prime Minister replied that it could have anything it wanted, and the Foreign Secretary had said as much to me the previous day in reply to a similar question. On that basis, we know that the Butler inquiry will have access to the full opinion. We also know that the ombudsman has called for it. As I said in my exchanges with the Solicitor-General at the time of the dropping of the Gun prosecution, it would be in line with the ministerial code for the matter to be put before the House to be cleared up.
	The Government amendment repeats the mantra, which the Foreign Secretary has repeated today from the Dispatch Box, that under the so-called
	long-standing convention . . . the advice of the Law Officers is given in confidence and is not disclosed publicly.
	I do not mean this offensively, but, as a point of factual correction, that is not true. In all fairness, I think that the Foreign Secretary admitted as much in our exchanges, so we have cleared that up. However, it is intolerable that for several weekseven several monthsmillions of people in this country have been subjected to yet another propaganda outburst, in which that convention was claimed to exist. In fact, that was not properly challenged at all until last week.
	I became so frustrated with that that I wrote a very plain letter to The Daily Telegraph setting out, in terms, the precedents for disclosure. I also spelled them out on the Today programme. Given that there is no rule of absolute confidentialityI go further, and say that no rule of confidentiality exists at allit is intolerable that the nation was deluged with so much propaganda and was led to think that disclosure of the Attorney-General's opinion would contravene some constitutional principle of the highest importance.
	The Foreign Secretary simply could not deny that many of the opinions previously disclosed by an Attorney-General related to state policy and questions of war and peace. That has happened on many important occasions, not all of them in the mists of antiquity, although some go back to 1865. They include the Belfast riots case, in which Palmerston made it explicit that there was no reason why the Attorney-General's opinion should not be made available to the House of Commons; he based that decision on the Cagliari case of 1858. Subsequently, along came Balfour in 1901, who, for reasons of political convenience, tried to change the rules. However, Edwardsthe great authority on these mattersmakes it clear that we cannot say dogmatically that there have been no occasions on which the Attorney-General's advice has not been made available, and there are so many instances when it has been, that it would be utterly absurd to cling to the idea that, in matters of great controversy and dispute involving state policy, as in the case of the Iraq war, the Attorney-General's opinion should not be made available this time.

Stephen McCabe: As the hon. Gentleman has told the House that there is no doubt in his mind as to the legality of the war, I assume that the release of the full advice would have no impact on his opinion, since he has already used his best judgment to come to that conclusion. Will he therefore tell the House whose cause would be served by the release of the information?

William Cash: I am coming to that. The answer is simple: it is the cause of trust. The very people who have been deluged with the deception that there is a bar to the Attorney-General's opinion being released to the public would benefit. Let us make no mistake: many people have been deceived into believing that a constitutional bar exists. We are bound to ask why such an alleged bar was set up. It was because the Government did not want people to know that no absolute rule of confidentiality existed. It was for that reason that I wrote my letter to The Daily Telegraph and appeared on the Today programme. As I have said, I did so because I became so fed up and frustrated at the deception that was being perpetrated.

Alex Salmond: How does the hon. Gentleman feel that the earlier exchange with the Foreign Secretary was left? The Foreign Secretary said first that the matter was up to the Attorney-General, but he seemed later to retract that. Did we reach a satisfactory conclusion on that issue?

William Cash: I think we were getting there.
	Such matters have been canvassed in the past, and I ought perhaps to refer again to Edwards, the great authority on the Law Officers of the Crown. He makes it abundantly clear that it is no more than a courtesy for the Attorney-General to be asked for his consent when a Minister decidesas a matter of his ministerial accountabilityto exercise his discretion to release the opinion of the Attorney-General in regard to the sphere of functions relating to that Minister. In this case, it is the sphere of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and, to a certain extent, the Defence Secretary that is at stake. Having opened my remarks by noting the absence of the Solicitor-General from this debate, it is instructive to point out that we now have two Foreign Office Ministers here. I hope that that is in recognition of the fact that they are responsible for the release of the opinion, and that it is not specifically the Solicitor-General or the Attorney-General, but those Ministers, who are primarily concerned.

Elfyn Llwyd: On that point, does not it make matters even worse that one of the senior legal advisers at the Foreign Office took a view opposite to that of the Attorney-General?

William Cash: Certainly, it is unusual to find the Foreign Office legal adviser resigning. I am not privy to the full facts of that resignation. Of course, the Attorney-General's advice at the time will have been based on the facts as he understood them, on which I will comment in a moment.
	Briefly, however, I want to deal with the other precedents that have been mentioned. The Archer Shee case in 1911, which was the famous Winslow boy case, raised matters affecting the integrity of the Admiralty. Then there was the instance of Austen Chamberlain on the legal questions arising over peace and disarmament in 1927. There was also the case of the naval base at Simonstown in 1971. There was the instancethis was not so much a matter of state policy, although I think that it was a matter of immensely important foreign policyof the Maastricht treaty in mid-1993. The advice given by the Law Officers with regard to the Merchant Shipping Act 1988, which was disclosed in the Factortame case, was also an example. In addition, there was the substance of the advice given in connection with the Scott inquiry, and an incidence in the 1960s in relation to Commonwealth immigration. Lastly, of course, there is the summary opinion of the Attorney-General given in relation to this war.
	The full advice has therefore been given on a number of occasions, and advice has been given in substance or in summary in others. As far as I know from all the reports that I have heard, the Australian Attorney-General's full opinion was given to the Australian Parliament. Many of the traditions on which Australia's parliamentary system is based are similar to ours, and no doubt similar considerations applied. I have been informed that the US Attorney-General's opinion could well be made available, too. Therefore, if we consider the desirability of transparency, there seems to be no profound reason why the opinion of the Attorney-General should not be available in this case.
	Given the debacle in the House of Lords yesterday in relation to the Constitutional Reform Bill, the role of the Attorney-General may be subject to some uncertainty, if not threat, in light of the kind of reforms being proposed and the abolition of the Lord Chancellor's role. The debate therefore has a certain poignancy, as it could turn out to be highly inconvenient to have a man of integrity and independence of mind standing up to a Government and saying, You cannot go to war. Previous Governments have had to contend with difficulties with regard to advice given by the Attorney-General in relation to matters of state policy, and that has been catastrophic for them.
	As we know, or ought to know, conventions depend on the reason for the rule. If the reason in this case is merely to protect the Governmentif the alleged convention not to release the advice of the Attorney-General is intended merely to protect the Government from their critics and those Back Benchers who voted reluctantly for the warthat is a bad reason. The convention, such as it isbroken as often as it is adhered toshould not be relied on in this instance. T. S. Eliot wrote in Murder in the Cathedral, that now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain: temptation shall not come in this kind again, for I now know it is the greatest treason to do the right thing for the wrong reason. I believe that the Government's moral dilemma in relation to the non-publication so far of this advice turns on that moral dilemma.
	For me, the most important question arising in this debate turns on accountability and trustaccountability for judgment and trust in the basis on which that judgment was made: the two are inter-woven. The disclosure of the advice is a matter not for the Attorney-General, but for the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. The Attorney-General could have arrived at his opinion, pursuant to my question on the eve of war, only on the basis of the facts before him at that time. The facts were provided by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretaryand so was the perception, or the understanding, or the conduct, of international relations in the context of international law. That may not be apparent at first sight, but I believe it has a great bearing on the matters we are considering.
	Contrary to suggestions by leading counsel in the press recently that the rule of confidentiality is based on the legal professional relationship between legal adviser and client, it is surely obvious to anyone thatas I said in an intervention earlierthe Attorney-General is not a mere legal adviser, and the Government are not a mere client. Given the case of R v. Allen in 1862, and on any constitutional analysis, the Attorney-General has a vital role in our constitutional arrangements. He is personally accountable to Parliament and is not collectively responsible to the Cabinet, as was made clear by the judgment of Lord Justice Cockburn. He is therefore in a unique and exposed position. At the time of giving his opinion on the legality of the war, if he had declared it to be unlawful and if his advice had not been accepted, he would have been honour-bound and expected to resign. That is his prerogative and his responsibility. If he advises the Government that a war is legal, all is well; if he does not, all hell is let loose.
	In such circumstances, there is every reason why the Attorney-General should not be left as the boy on the burning deck. I am bound to say that that thought lay at the back of my mind when I told the Solicitor-General on 26 February, in relation to the dropping of the Katharine Gun prosecution, that I found much of what she said pretty unconvincing. It was anticipated that the full opinion of the Attorney-General would be demanded during the course of the case by way of disclosure. In particular, it was clear that Katharine Gun regarded herself as being blatantly in breach of the Official Secrets Act. The route adopted for the dropping of the prosecution on the ground of evidential deficiency is to say the least tortuous, although it does relieve the Attorney-General of the need to issue a nolle prosequi in the public interest, for which he alone would be personally accountable to Parliament, that being unchallengeable in any court.
	The Solicitor-General claimed in her statement on that day that the Prime Minister was bound to take his law from the Attorney-General. In a letter of 26 February, the then Clerk of the House of Commons, Sir William Mackay, stated that, in line with page 389 of Erskine May,
	the Law Officers have no control over the legal action of the Government. A Minister is not obliged to take his law from the Attorney General. Accountability thus rests with the Ministerial decision taker.
	In other words, we are back to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, although the latter refused to accept that point in his speech.
	At 6 o'clock yesterday evening, I received an unsatisfactory answer from the Solicitor-General about the so-called evidential deficiency, which we all believe has much to do with the desire not to publish the full opinion. On the dropping of the Katharine Gun prosecution, the Attorney-General indicated in the other place that the papers relating to that evidence would be made availableor so I thought I heard him say. I have asked the Solicitor-General to lay these papers in the Library, and she said that she would provide an answer shortly. I faxed her last night, asking that the papers be made available for today's debate, but they have not been provided.
	As I have said before, the production of the full opinion is a matter separate from the legality of the war. Many believe, for example, that the 45-minute claim was exaggerated in order to get Labour Members through the Lobby. In common with my colleaguesor most of themI believe that the war was both legal and necessary. Indeed, I have much sympathy with the Prime Minister's speech last Friday on global terrorism, although I disagree with him when he claims that the question should not be one of issues of trust, but of his judgment. For me, it is a question of both judgment and trust.
	The Prime Minister is right to say that the United Nations needs reform and that international law needs re-evaluating. There is no final arbiter or court to adjudicate on many of these matters, although in my opinion we were unwise to submit ourselves to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Lord Boyce was right to insist that our armed forces were satisfied that the war was legal. We need to go further than that, however.
	Of course, there is much to be said for the rules of international law in their general sense, but the Attorney-General's opinion is intimately bound up with the centre of gravity of our perception of, and conduct of, international relations, and with international law and our view of the nation state. It is therefore integral to the Government's view of foreign policy. The release of the Attorney-General's opinion would throw much light on these matters.
	As the Prime Minister said in his Sedgefield speech, in our own self-interest we and the United States are ultimately bound up with the fate of other nations. Although he does not seem to appreciate the fact, his decision to go to war was based on the Westphalian concept of nation states, which he repudiated in his speech. According to that concept, states decide for themselves what is in their own self-interestas the French, the Germans and the Russians did in respect of resolution 1441. Indeed, all those nations adopted their positions as individual nation states in their own self-interest, in opposition to the self-interest, as they saw it, of the United States and the United Kingdom. Indeed, Monsieur Vedrine, the former French Foreign Minister, said that the French were making decisions according to their interpretation of their own interests.
	Fundamental matters of foreign policy such as the 45-minute claim and what the Prime Minister knew about whether or not the weapons were battlefield weapons are inherently matters of judgment as well as of trust. If the Prime Minister wants us to trust his judgment, he would do well, in line with the precedents on state policy, to satisfy the House that the instructions to the Attorney-General as evidenced in his opinionand Her Majesty's Government's policy on international law and the United Nations as reflected in that opinionstand scrutiny. That should include the Attorney-General's opinion about the extent and relevance of international law, so that it cannot be said that the Attorney-General had changed his mind about the legality of the war, as we know he did in respect of the Gun prosecution.
	In circumstances that echo today's debate, it emerges that in 1924 the Cabinet exerted undue pressure on the integrity and independence of the then Attorney-General, Sir Patrick Hastings, in relation to the Campbell sedition case. But the storm clouds grew and eventually burst in a vote of censure on Ramsay MacDonald's Government, which then fell. It would be as well for the Prime Minister to take note.

Alan Simpson: I do not propose to speak for half an hour, and I begin by apologising for not being a lawyer in a debate that has so far effectively been dominated by lawyers.
	It is in the interests of all right hon. and hon. Members to ensure and insist that decisions made by the House comply with international law. It is to that context that I shall confine my comments. I do not want a re-run of the arguments about whether or not the war should have been fought. I accept the Prime Minister's view that, at one level, that is a matter of judgment. I have never questioned the sincerity of the Prime MinisterI just think his judgment was awful. The House has a responsibility to express judgments, and we will be judged by the public when they cast their votes. That is the nature of politics. Part of that process presupposes that judgments are made within a framework of legality.
	The official position of the Conservative party cannot be rewritten as part of a post-hoc rationalisation. Before the war, I toured television stations either preceding or following the shadow Foreign Secretary. It was clear that the issue of legality did not for one moment pass through his mind. At some stages, his gung-ho approach left me feeling that if the Conservatives had evidence of Saddam passing wind, that would have been enough to declare war. The Conservatives just wanted to be in there, so for them to suggest at this point that they had a continuing concern about compliance with international law is not to be truthful. That is not necessarily the claim made by all Conservative Members but it would certainly be a gross distortion of official Conservative Front-Bench policy at the time.
	Convention or not, one of the most important principles of open, democratic accountability in respect of an issue as profoundly important as going to war is that legal advice should be presented to the House. Right hon. and hon. Members have spoken about lawyer-client confidentiality, but it was the House that endorsed support for the war. As such, it was Parliament that should have been deemed to be the client and it is Parliament that should have the right to know the contents of the legal advice.
	My reservations about the wording of the motion do not relate to whether the advice should be disclosed. Rather, the motion presents an inadequate proposition by posing three important questions that it then ducks. It cannot be sufficient merely to ask for the advice of the Attorney-General. We must ask for the background advice given to the Attorney-General by his deputy, Elizabeth Wilmshurst. We need to know also which other counsels' opinion was sought. As a House, we ought to address what we would do with advice presented to us today.
	As to the opinion of other counsels, having had a limited amount of local government experience, I take a sanguine view of the advice that one gets from lawyers. Lawyers will give the best advice that money can buyand the best opposite advice that money can buy. Whether one believes that or not, councillors in local government would usually look at the legal advice and ask whether it would get past the district auditor, knowing that someone else would judge them on that advice

David Winnick: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Alan Simpson: No, because we have had so many interventions, and it is inappropriate for an hon. Member who has been absent for much of the last couple of hours to intervene at this stage.
	The point is that someone else will judge the legality of one's actions. What the legal profession provided was legal advice and opinion, not necessarily an affirmation of legality. Ultimately, that is what the House will have to face up to.
	Some hon. Members have mentioned human rights and argued that it was right to tackle the wretched record of Saddam Hussein, but I must remind them that that was not the basis of the case made to justify going to war. As others have pointed out, regime change would have been illegal under international law. The case made to justify the war was mounted on the basis of Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction, the threat to international security and the breach of UN resolutions.
	In respect of UN resolutions, we should remind ourselves of what was said by Hans Blixnot only head of the weapons inspectorate, but himself an international lawyer. In an interview with The Independent at the weekend, he said:
	I don't buy the argument the war was legalised by the Iraqi violation of earlier resolutions.
	He went on to say that ownership of the resolutions rested with the entire 15-member Security Council, and not with individual international states. That is the proper basis and we should reflect on it. It is a fact that the rest of the UN Security Council believed that there was no automaticity to a war on the basis of resolution 1441. As Sir Jeremy Greenstock made clear, a second resolution would have been required to justify war. What Hans Blix is telling us is that the possession of the right to determine was the prerogative of the UN Security Council. That is my main concern.
	As a Parliament we must move beyond simple demands about what information and advice should be made available towards recognition that countries cannot act as judge and jury in their own cause. Those who argue that the outcome justifies the war are treading a flawed and dangerous path. It cannot be right for any country to be able to start a war simply because it wants to, and then declare the war lawful because it chooses to. That is making up international law as one goes along. If we presume that right for ourselves, the same right applies to every other countrywhether it be a rogue state or axis of evil country or not. All those states would have exactly the same rights. The willingness of this Parliament to hold itself to account to international law, as judged by other international bodies, is the central issue at stake.
	This weekend the Prime Minister made a speech about the war on terrorism. He made an important point when he said:
	It means reforming the United Nations so its Security Council represents 21st century reality; and giving the UN the capability to act effectively as well as debate.
	The Prime Minister was asking for new flexibilities. I suspect that, if that were put to the Security Council, other member states would talk about different constraints on the freedom of individual states. Throughout his speech, the Prime Minister may have wanted flexibilities, but he wanted them within a framework of legality. That is the central issue that we must address.
	If the Government genuinely believe that there was a legal case for war, we should take the initiative ourselves and refer the case either to the International Criminal Court or to the UN Security Council.
	There needs to be a judgment that is not made by us. The people who perpetrate a war cannot be the ones who determine whether it was legal.
	That was brought home to me by the comments of Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff at the time. Other hon. Members have made reference to his demand, six days before the war started and with troops lined up on the borders of Iraq, for an unequivocal assurance that the war was legal. The significance of that demand is that he should have made it at all. No members of the defence staff or the armed forces would ever want to be accused of being unwilling to fight a legal war, or to put their lives on the line to defend the country against a real and present threat to our security.
	However, Sir Michael was merely voicing the concerns of the defence establishment, which reflected the view of the British public that the war was not legal. The Chief of the Defence Staff feared that British soldiers would find themselves hauled up before the ICC and charged with committing war crimes because the war was not deemed to be legal.
	The House must find the courage to do more than demand that the Attorney-General's advice be published. We must go further, and deal with the central question that the British public want us to address. The answer to that question cannot be determined through the claims and self-justifications of those who made the decisions. Only in the court of international opinion, or in the international institutions established to define the legalities of war, will the question be answered that people still ask us every day on their doorsteps. Was the war legal? At the moment, the answer in the public mind is no.

Hywel Williams: I am not a lawyer, and that makes me unusual in this debate. However, my remarks centre on the fact that non-lawyers can also contribute to the discussion of these matters, as can people from the countries represented on these Benches.
	My constituents are puzzled by the Government's strange reticence on this matter. Earlier, the Foreign Secretary likened the situation to the relationship between lawyer and client. He said that confidentiality must be respected, or the relationship would be worthless in the future. Similarly, he claimed that the Attorney-General's advice must remain confidential.
	However, the relationship in question is not like the one that exists between a client and a lawyer. It is the relationship between a Government and a people. The advice given to the Government was the basis on which we went to war. That is not a pettifogging issue, as the right hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) claimed. He is not here at present, but it is not as if we are talking about double parking, shoplifting or the larceny of bicycle inner tubes. We are talking about warthe most extreme action a Government or state can take. The tragedies of 20,000 people, at least, attest to the seriousness of the matter. War is serious; it is not pettifogging.
	If we are to resolve the matter collectively, and if the Government are to achieve the closure that Ministers and their friends so long for, the people of our countries must be satisfied. They must be given the full information so that they can decide the matter for themselves. I thought that Labour Members believed in the maxim, Trust the people, but clearly they do not in this instance. I hope that the Government can trust the people in the future and that they publish the advice.
	I was against the war and remain against it. I am clear about that, but this matter does not concern the war itself. The question here is whether people should be told the basis for going to war. If the advice is published, it will not be hon. Members who are satisfied but the people, in which case my constituents will be satisfied or otherwise by the Government's actions. The question is not for my hon. Friends or me; it is for the people, because the Government are answerable to the people of the United Kingdomthe people of Scotland, the people of Wales and the people of my Caernarfon constituency.
	If the Government persist with their course of action and refuse to come clean and allow the matter to be resolved, the people will find them shifty and evasive, andperhaps wronglythey will be found guilty by default. If they have nothing to fear, nothing to hide and no guilt, let them publish the advice and be justified.

Diane Abbott: I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. Contrary to suggestions by my hon. Friends that the issue is pettifogging and that ordinary people are not interested in it, I have received many letters about it and am glad to speak on behalf of my constituents.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. McCabe) asked, whose cause would be served by publishing the legal advice. I have a simple answer: the cause of democracy will be served by publishing the legal advice. We have heard that Ministers' arguments that there is no precedent for publishing the Attorney-General's advice is wholly specious. In his comprehensive speech, the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) set out all the precedents going back to the 19th century. Before he informed us about the historical precedents, we already knew that the Government had partially revealed the advice by presenting a summary. I am not a lawyer, but I cannot see the difference between publishing a summary of the advice and publishing the whole advice.
	The other argument that we have heard from MinistersI hope that we will not hear it again this afternoonis that the Government are somehow comparable to a lawyer's private client, but that is tendentious. The Government are not the clients; if anything, we are the clients, and therefore we are entitled to see advice that was sought in our names.
	Some of my hon. Friends have asked why there is concern about the legal advice. One reason why there is concern is that it is widely acknowledged that the greatest expertise about the law in relation to war and foreign policy rests not with the Attorney-General, who is a distinguished commercial lawyer but not an expert on these matters, but the Foreign Office. Is it pure coincidence that the deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office resigned on the eve of the war? Could it be that there were uncertainties within the Foreign Office that were not reflected in the published summary of the Attorney-General's advice?

Alice Mahon: At the United Nations, almost every person who was asked their opinion, including the Secretary-General Kofi Annan, did not give their blessing to the legality of the war. They are the experts on going to war.

Diane Abbott: I am grateful to my hon. Friend.
	On the eve of war, the deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned, which was not sufficiently remarked on at the time. Days before the war, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Michael Boyce, insisted on a simple statement on the legality of the war. That gives the lie to my hon. Friends who claim that the legality of the war was transparent all along. If the Chief of the Defence Staff demanded a definitive statement on the legality of the war, it means that there was uncertainty among those who were best placed to knowour armed forces. People ask why we are obsessed with this pettifogging issue and why are we always looking backwards, but I believe that the British public value our armed forces and do not want to feel that we sent them to fight an illegal war. That is not a trivial matter. Indeed, it goes to the heart of the framework of international law.
	One of the reasons for the uncertainty, the bloodshed and the attacks on our forces in the region is a widespread belief internationally that the war was not legal. Certainly, military action was not taken on the basis of a genuine international consensus. It was undertaken unilaterally by the US and Britain. Whether my hon. Friends like it or not, the issue still concerns the British public. The legality of the war has a bearing on the legitimacy of the actions of our troops in the future.
	The issue will not go away. There is a shadow hanging over the Government and all the bluster and threats against certain of my hon. Friendssuch as intimations that we will be put in front of a special tribunals and asked whether we are, or have ever been, socialistswill not make it go away. The shadow from the war with Iraq is a widespread perceptionnot only among Opposition Members and Back Benchersthat we sent our troops into an illegal war. If the Government are confident of the legal basis for the war, they have nothing to fear from completing the process that they have started and publishing, in full, the Attorney-General's advice.

Alex Salmond: It is a great pleasure to sum up the debate, which was opened by my hon. Friend the Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd).
	Over the weekend, The Guardian asked for my memories of the Iraq debate held almost a year ago; I am sure that the Foreign Secretary and many others who participated in it will also be asked, if they have not been already, about their memories. I took the precaution of re-reading the debate, and it is instructive to see the development in the positions of several people.
	I was pleased to note that I started my contribution by saying what I still believe to be the casethat the fundamental issue at stake was not Saddam Hussein, Iraq, oil or international terrorism, but the development of a new world order. In particular, it was the development of a doctrine of pre-emption by the dominantindeed, the onlysuperpower in the world, and how the world community would adjust to that new reality. Having read the speech that the Prime Minister made in Sedgefield on Friday, I am even more concerned, because in it he sailed close to the wind about such a doctrine. As has been said at least once in this debate, the problem with a doctrine of pre-emption is that it would not be used only by the most powerful country in the world. By definition, without a framework of international law by which countries must abide, it is a doctrine that can be used by any country that is more powerful than another country from which it perceives a threat. I still think that the framework of law is the most important issue in the war in Iraq. The issue is still with us and it is clear that the Prime Minister is now struggling with it, although it might have been better to have had that intellectual struggle before the conflict, instead of afterwards.
	I make my second point because, remarkably, I hear from a number of ultra-loyal forces on the Government Benches that somehow the question of weapons of mass destruction was not the dominant theme in the Prime Minister's presentation to us on 18 March. In fact, he presented us with a clear and present danger, saying:
	Let me explain the dangers. Three kilograms of VX from a rocket launcher would contaminate 0.25 square km of a city. Millions of lethal doses are contained in one litre of anthrax, and 10,000 litres are unaccounted for. What happened on 11 September has changed the psychology of Americathat is clearbut it should have changed the psychology of the world. [Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 769.]
	The Prime Minister presented us with a world in which there was a clear, imminent threat, one that required an immediate response. It could not even wait a few weeks for Hans Blix and the rest of the inspectors to complete their work and furnish us with the facts. Those facts, which were then unknown, are now probably known to the extent that no such weapons of mass destruction have been found.
	I want to do three things in summing up the debate, beginning with a look at the framework of law. I will not follow my hon. Friend the Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy, who quoted extensively from many legal authorities and said that people who were for or against legality all argued that the Attorney-General's advice should be published. I thought that that was an extremely powerful point, even if the Foreign Secretary did not take it fully on board. I want to quote key people who were involved in terms of the international framework of law: Hans Blix and the Secretary-General of the United Nations, who were not involved in our domestic political debate, but who were at the very centre of what can be defined as the world order, or at least what should be defined as the world order.
	Secondly, I want to look at the development of Government thinking, because one of the reasons why the Attorney-General's advice should be published is that it is clear to me that the Government's thinking on the matter went through a serious evolutionary change as the realisation dawned that a second resolution would not be possible. I should like to see whether the Attorney-General's legal opinion reflected that change as the sequence of events unfolded, which is why I should like to see all his advice published.
	Thirdly, I want to repeat the fundamental point that the party to this argument, the client, was not the Government. The client was Parliament and the people of this country, who are absolutely entitled to see the legal basis on which they were committed to conflict.
	With regard to the question of quoting people, the Foreign Secretary follows the Prime Minister in almost demeaning his profession. Lawyers are people who disagree. It is said that there are as many legal opinions as there are lawyers. I am an economist, and the same sort of thing is said about economists. There is an argument unfolding that this is a matter about which reasonable people can agree or disagree: that there is no absolute certainty, no absolute fact, no moral code to abide by, but a series of arguments. On Friday the Prime Minister said it again:
	The lawyers continue to divide over it
	the question of law
	with their legal opinions bearing a remarkable similarity to their political views of the war.
	I stop the quotation there. Lawyers would be less than human if their legal judgments were not informed by their general views. Every human being has that tendency. But is it not also possible that many lawyers, and many other human beings, informed their view of the war by their opinion of its legality, not vice-versa?
	The question of legality is fundamental. In all the conflicts that I have been asked to vote upon, on some of which I agreed with the Government, as with the then Government on the first Iraq conflict and with the present Government on a number of humanitarian interventions more recently, I have taken as my fundamental code United Nations approval and sanction for conflict. Although they have never arisen to date, there might be circumstances in which the United Nations sanctioned an action and I still would not feel it to be right, because, as the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) pointed out, the legality of a war is dependent on whether the action is proportionate, whether it is effective and whether all other avenues have been tried. However, the guidance of the United Nations is not a bad place to start from when deciding whether a conflict is legal and justified.
	I shall quote from three opinions. The first is from a former Solicitor-General, Lord Archernot the Tory but the Labour onewho served in that position for five years during the 1970s:
	Resolution 1441 . . . manifestly does not authorise military action. If the Council had intended to do so it could have said so quite unambiguously. To seek to spell out such authority from a reference to 'serious consequences' is to treat the Security Council as a Delphic oracle.[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 March 2003; Vol. 646, c. 90.]
	If the advice of the present Attorney-General had been not that war was legal, but that it was not justified and not legal, what would have been the Government's response? Would it have been to change their course of action or their Attorney-General? I want to get to the heart of the relationship between the Government and their Law Officers.

Jack Straw: The hon. Gentleman is making a preposterous suggestion. If the Attorney-General had come to a different view, it would have been communicated to the House and that would have been the end of the matter.

Alex Salmond: So if Lord Archer were still a Law Officer in the Labour Government and had communicated his view, we should not have gone to war?

Jack Straw: The hon. Gentleman is making the general suggestion that the position of the Attorney-General is not independent of Ministers and that if his advice is not acceptable Ministers require it to be changed, on threat of his being sacked. That is a preposterous statement and is utterly untrue and incorrectin respect not only of the present Administration but of any Administration. Peter Archer is a good friend and I should be happy to take him through the negotiating history of 1441 and explain why I think he erred, but if he had been the Attorney-General and had, finally, come to a different view, that would have been the end of the matter.

Alex Salmond: The key word is finally. One of the issues that we want to explore is whether the Attorney-General's advice went through a variety of versions before the Foreign Secretary published the final document in summary[Interruption.] The Foreign Secretary waves his hands, but earlier in the debate he implied that the veto over the publication of the advice was in the hands of the Attorney-General, so it is perfectly reasonable to ask him whether the Attorney-General's advice went through a series of drafts before it became the final advice that the Foreign Secretary deigned to give the House when he wanted sanction for the war. However, if the Law Officers have a veto over such actionas the Foreign Secretary saysI am very pleased to hear it. I am glad that someone has a veto over military action.
	My second quotation is from Hans Blix[Interruption.] The Foreign Secretary can listen to the quotation and then comment. Hans Blix is an international lawyer as well as a weapons inspector, and he said:
	I don't buy the argument that the war was legalised by the Iraqi violation of earlier resolutions . . . It's the Security Council that is party to the ceasefire, not the UK and the US individually, and therefore it is the council that has ownership over the ceasefire, in my interpretation . . . Any individual member could take a viewthe Russians could take one view, the Chinese could take another, they could be at war with each other, theoretically.
	I shall come in a few seconds to the questions of who owns a decision to go to war and who owns the advice of the Attorney-General, but the point of view expressed by Hans Blix is surely correct: ownership of the interpretation of what is sanctioned by the UN lies with its Security Council and not with individual countries in the Council, which might come to different conclusions.
	In the lead-up to the war, Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, set out his position, saying that
	the legitimacy and support of any such action will be seriously impaired . . . If the United States and others were to go outside the Council and take military action, it would not be in conformity with the charter
	of the United Nations. Those are not lawyers giving different legal opinions; they are the key players in an international framework of lawplayers whom the Foreign Secretary decided to bypass or ignore for the purposes of gaining legal sanction for the decision to go to war.
	Another issue that has been raised in the debate is the Elizabeth Wilmshurst resignation, which has not been spoken of or debated publicly to the same extent perhaps as the Katharine Gun trial and other issues, but it is surely pertinent when a career civil servant, who, by all accounts, had a distinguished career and was near the pinnacle of her profession as deputy legal adviser in the Foreign Office, resigns on the eve of a conflict. At the very least, that gives us the strong suggestion that the arguments involving lawyers that the Foreign Secretary thinks take place outside the realms of the Foreign Office were taking place within the Foreign Office itself. I should like to know whether the Attorney-General weighed up those arguments and counter-suggestions before he finally decided to agree with the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary and give them the basis that they wanted for the legality of the conflict.
	 I also want to explore the development of Government thinking. The Foreign Secretary is very sensitive on this matter. He takes every opportunity, even when it is not central to the debate, as it is in this one, to tell us about his efforts on resolution 1441, but we can be reasonably convincedcan we not?that the Government's position on the central importance of that resolution was developing as events moved along. On 4 March, the Cabinet Secretary confirmed to the Public Administration Committee:
	This was a moving situation because for a long time we were thinking this might have been authorised by a specific UN resolution, in a way because it would have been clear cut. We worked hard to get it and worked on the assumption that we probably would. I'm not aware of a plan B. It only became apparent when that resolution was not forthcoming that advice was needed.
	What advice was the Cabinet Secretary talking about? Had there been prior advice based on resolution 1441? Was it only after the desired outcome of resolution 1441 was not forthcoming that advice was needed?
	The indication that the Government's advice was developing also comes from the comments of Admiral Sir Michael Boyce. For example, in The Herald on 8 March this year, he said:
	My views were clear and made very formally in Cabinet and in the view I transmitted to the Attorney-General through Number 10. I required a piece of paper saying it was lawful. Now, if that causes them to go back saying 'We need our advice tightened up', I don't know.
	Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff, clearly believed on the eve of war that he had not been supplied with an adequate and clear explanation of the legal position, and he required one, quite rightly, because he was concerned about the implications for him and the armed forces under his command if one was not provided. I should like the Foreign Secretary to say whether the Attorney-General's advice evolved to meet the circumstances and when that advice departed from resolution 1441 and went outside that resolution's remit.
	The Prime Minister has never been able to explain the content of his interview on Newsnight on 6 February 2003, in which he was absolutely explicit that the only circumstance in which war would be sanctioned outwith a second resolution was if one country exercised an unreasonable veto. As we well know, it was a question not of one country exercising an unreasonable veto, but of the majority of the Security Council not being prepared to agree to that second resolution. We need to know how the Government's legal advice developed as events took their course.
	The absolutely crucial aspect of the debate is the information allowed to those who make decisions. The Foreign Secretary has made great play of the fact that the House was given the unprecedented opportunity to make a decision on whether to go to war on a substantive motion. Despite all the points in the debate on which I disagree with him, I do not disagree with him about that. It was a good initiative and rightly something of which to be proud. However, if the House is to be called upon to make such a fundamental decision, surely the unavoidable conclusion is that the House, on behalf of the people whom it represents, should be given all possible advice on which to base its decision. The Attorney-General's advice has been described as a summary or a prcis, and the Foreign Secretary earlier described it as a digest. If the House makes a decision, it is entitled to full information. If the public are called on to support a decision, we are entitled to full information.
	As we have heard, there are several precedents for releasing an Attorney-General's advice: the Factortame judgment, the situation regarding the Commonwealth Immigration Act 1962 and the Scott inquiry. The precedents go right back to 1865 and Lord Palmerston and the Belfast riots. However, even if there were not a single precedent, it would be right fully to publish the Attorney-General's advice on this occasion because of the unprecedented and correct decision to allow the House a substantive vote on peace or war. It is a question of ownership. Just as the United Nations should own the right to decide whether to sanction action on its behalf, the House, on behalf of the people, should have ownership of any legal advice that informs a decision on whether to go to war.
	The Prime Minister has set out his case, and I re-read the Foreign Secretary's comments from last year's debate in which he said that if we agreed to the motion the world would become a safer place and the authority of the United Nations would be upheld. As the Prime Minister pointed out on Friday, the world is still in deadly peril. Is Iraq a safer place? The Foreign Secretary was right to say that the removal of the dictator was a major gain. The passing of a draft constitution is a major gain, but it has not yet been put into effect. The gains are immense, but it can hardly be said that they were a bargain given that 10,000 people are deadBritish and American soldiers, and Iraqi civilians.
	Even more tragically and importantly, the authority of the United Nations has not been upheld to consolidate its position. We have moved from the situation on 12 September 2001 when 100 countries came behind the United States of America in its moment of extremity to back an international war against terrorism, to a position in which the international community and the United Nations have been fractured to such an extent that the Prime Minister believes that there must be a new world order to reflect current realities.
	The war in Iraq is haunting the Prime Minister and it will haunt the Government. The ghost will not be exorcised by telling journalists to write about something else or by saying that the solution is reform of the United Nations to make it conform to what he wants it to do. I honestly do not think that it will be exorcised by refusing to publishby keeping secretadvice and information to which the House, which was asked to vote on a war, and the people of this country, who were asked to support a war, are entitled.

Bill Rammell: This debate has been useful in reviewing many important issues surrounding the conflict with Iraq, but I am honestly not sure that it has been about the legality of going to war and whether it was right or wrong to do so. Hon. Members rehearsed arguments made in the Chamber before about whether we were right in principle to go to war, which is a separate issue.
	Let me deal with the issues that were raised. The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) referred to the non-disclosure of the Attorney-General's advice. He said that it was impossible to be dogmatic, and that there might be circumstances in which everything is to be gained from disclosure. That is an arguable case, but it is not justified in the circumstances. If he looks at the precedents, such advice from an Attorney-General has never been disclosed in circumstances of military conflictnot once has that happened, and he should reflect on that. He went on to level accusations at the Government, asking whether we can support the rule of law in Iraq when we ignore it here. I would argue emphatically that we are not ignoring the rule of law, and I would maintain equally emphatically that we would not have gone to war unless it was lawful under international law to do so.

Alex Salmond: Reflecting on the Minister's first argument, a number of precedents for the full disclosure of the Attorney-General's advice have been raised in the debate, including, for example, the case of the Spanish fishing boats. Does the Minister maintain that it was more important to reveal advice on such an issue than to do so on the most fundamental issue of all?

Bill Rammell: I wish that I had not given way to the hon. Gentleman. I was making the point that when Members cite selective examples of precedent, they must be able to sustain their argument, and I do not believe that they have done so this afternoon.
	The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy said that we went to war solely on the basis of intelligence in the possession of the UK Government. That is emphatically not the case. We went to war because resolution 1441, which was passed unanimously, gave Iraq a last chance verifiably to disarm, which it manifestly did not take. Hans Blix's report consists of 173 pages of unanswered questions, which also led us to our conclusion. The hon. Gentleman threw in for good measure the 45-minute claim. Nothing in our debate has frustrated me more than the focus after the event on that claim, which in retrospect has grown in importance compared with its relevance in the run-up to conflict. The record shows that the 45-minute claim was raised only twice in the 40,000 parliamentary questions tabled between the publication of the dossier and the decision to go to war on 18 March 2003. Not once was it raised in oral questions, and not once was it raised in the debate on 18 March. It is all very well to make such claims in retrospect, but we need to look at what happened in fact in the run-up to the war.
	The hon. Gentleman lamented the fact that he was not in a position to make a judgment without seeing the Attorney-General's advice. I contend that he does not need to do sothe Attorney-General's statement to Parliament makes the legal position clearunless he is saying that the Attorney-General said one thing to Parliament in his published response and another privately to the Government. Unless that is his contention, I do not understand the case that he is making.

Elfyn Llwyd: I have already gone out of my way to say that I am not impugning the credibility of the Attorney-General or the veracity of what he said. I repeat: the facts on which he based his conclusion are the key to the whole debate.

Bill Rammell: With respect, I think that the hon. Gentleman did impugn the integrity of the Attorney-General[Interruption.] Let me finish the point. He said clearly that he was not impugning the Attorney-General's integrity, but he went on to argue that the Attorney-General had been gagged yet had remained in office, which is fundamentally to question his integrity. I hope that in the cold light of day the hon. Gentleman will reflect on his comments and withdraw them.
	We then heard a contribution from the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), who said that although advice from the Attorney-General should ordinarily remain confidential, he disagreed with that in these particular circumstances. I find it difficult to reconcile his comments with those made by his right hon and learned Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary in a debate in the House on 22 October, when he said, explicitly referring to the Attorney-General's advice:
	I accept that that is a sensitive area that might not necessarily benefit from the sharp spotlight of public scrutiny.[Official Report, 22 October 2003; Vol. 411, c. 670.]
	The House needs to know what, in the view of the Opposition, has changed between then and now.

Dominic Grieve: First, there is no incompatibility between what my right hon. and learned Friend said and what I said. Secondly, the major change that has taken place since then is that information has come to light that has led to public disquiet about what information the Government had on weapons of mass destruction and how they used it. That is why the Government set up the Butler inquiry.

Bill Rammell: I wholly refute what the hon. Gentleman says. If the public disquiet to which he refers exists now, it existed then. That is why the shadow Foreign Secretary called for an independent judicial inquiry. There is a significant difference between what the hon. Gentleman said today and what his right hon. and learned Friend said as recently as October last year. That demonstrates yet again that nobody knows more about opportunism than Conservative Front Benchers.
	I listened carefully to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Llew Smith), who is no longer in the Chamber. He said that the House needs to know whether Ministers deliberately distorted evidence to justify the case for war, and implied that we could well have done. I shall choose my words carefully, because I have the greatest respect for hon. Members who, in opposing the decision to go to war, reached a conclusion that differed from mine. However, they do not have a monopoly on conviction or sincerity in this regard. I respect their right to put forward their views, but I wish that they would respect the right of Government Front Benchers similarly to argue from the position of conviction and sincerity.
	As for the allegation that we distorted and fabricated evidence and misled the House, that has been refuted on three separate occasions. The cross-party Intelligence and Security Committee, the cross-party Foreign Affairs Committee and the Hutton inquiry all concluded in terms that we did not distortto use the jargon, sex upthe dossier and that we took reasonable decisions based on the evidence before us. I wish that hon. Members who disagree with our decision to go to war would at least concede that point to us.
	My hon. Friend raised the issue of Jeremy Greenstock's comments and the argument that the first Security Council resolution had no automaticity in terms of deciding to go to war. That is a key argument that needs to be addressed. I stress that Security Council resolution 1441 did not revive the 678 authorisation immediately on its adoption. In that very significant sense, there was no automaticity. The resolution rightly afforded Iraq a final opportunity to comply and provided for any failure by Iraq to be considered by the Security Council. Howeverthis is the key pointthat paragraph in the resolution does not mean that no further action could be taken without a new resolution by the Security Council. Had that explicitly been the intention, it would have provided that the Security Council would decide what needed to be done to restore international peace and security, not, as the resolution actually stated, to consider the matter. The choice of words was explicit and deliberate. A proposal that there should be a requirement for a decision by the Security Councila position that was initially maintained by several of its memberswas not adopted. Instead, rightly in my view, the Security Council opted for the formula that it must consider the matter before any action was taken. That is fundamentally what happened.
	The right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) knows from many of the issues with which we have been involved that I have the greatest respect for him. This afternoon, however, he questioned the legal basis for going to war. Yet on 24 September 2002, in the run-up to war, he made it clear that he believed that there was a legal basis. He said:
	It may well be true that, legally, no new resolution is required for the use of force to implement resolution 687.[Official Report, 24 September 2002; Vol. 390, c. 43.]
	He was right then and I wish that he had followed the thrust of his argument. His words in September 2002 do not sit easily with his comments today.

Menzies Campbell: Does the Minister concede that I consistently said that military action must be seen as a last resort when all other diplomatic and political alternatives have been exhausted, and that the source of international law is to be found not only in the United Nations and its charter or resolutions but in customary international law?

Bill Rammell: All hon. Members viewed military conflict as a last resort. I simply point out that the right hon. and learned Gentleman questioned the legality of our decision today, but did not do so in September 2002.

Alex Salmond: The question of last resort affects legality. However, what does the Minister say to Hans Blix's comment that ownership of Security Council resolutions should lie with the Security Council, not with any individual country within it?

Bill Rammell: There was a unanimous view on resolution 1441, but a disagreement on the method of enforcing it. We are entirely clear that we acted in accordance with international law at all times.
	Authority to use force against Iraq derived explicitly from the combined effect of United Nations Security Council resolutions 687, 678 and 1441. They were all adopted under chapter VII of the UN charter, which allows for the use of force for the express purpose of restoring international peace and security. The debate has centred on the disclosure of the Attorney-General's advice and the long-standing convention, which both parties have observed when in government, of not normally revealing that advice. The reasons for the convention of non-disclosure are compelling. Its purpose is to enable the Government, like everyone else, to obtain frank and full legal advice in confidence. It is manifestly in the public interest for all Governments to act in that way and in accordance with the rule of law.
	As Ministers have said on innumerable occasions, the Attorney-General's advice was not to be disclosed. Nevertheless, in view of the amount of public interest, the Attorney-General exceptionally set out his view of the legal basis for the use of force against Iraq in response to a written parliamentary question on 17 March 2003. The Government are therefore confident that their actions in Iraq were right and consistent with the United Kingdom's international obligations. Again, I make it clear that the Government would not have engaged in military action unless they were satisfied that it was legal under international law.
	Let me deal briefly with precedent. As I said earlier, I am not aware that Law Officers' advice on any previous military conflict has ever been disclosed at the time of conflict. Even on less serious issues, there has never been a general policy of disclosure. Given the position of Conservative Front-Bench Members now, it is interesting to recall the then Government's position on the Maastricht treaty in 1993. Although the Foreign Secretary had made a statement that included a summary of the Law Officers' conclusions, the Attorney-General was asked, and explicitly refused, to disclose his full advice. It was right then and it is right now. Those points need to be made clearly.
	This Government, like others before them, will not reveal advice that the Attorney-General has given them. That is, rightly, the long-standing convention, which allows the Government, like everyone else, to obtain frank and full legal advice in confidence. However, hon. Members should be in no doubt that the conflict was legal. The Government would not have engaged in military action had they not been satisfied that such action was legal under international law.
	Just as importantly, we should return to the central reason why we took military action. The removal of Saddam Hussein has made the world a much safer place. The conflict that we undertook was right and just; now, however, we should focus on our priority of reconstruction and the creation of a safe and stable democratic Iraq. Yesterday's signing of the transitional administrative law was a significant historic achievement. We are now committed to helping the Iraqis to achieve the prosperity, freedom and democracy that Saddam Hussein denied them for decades. That is the significant point in the debate, and I urge hon. Members to support the amendment and reject the main motion.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:
	The House divided: Ayes 192, Noes 283.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	Resolved,
	That this House notes the long-standing convention, followed by successive governments, that the advice of the Law Officers is given in confidence and is not disclosed publicly; notes, however, the Answer given in the House of Lords by the Attorney General on 17th March 2003 which set out his view of the legal basis of the use of force against Iraq, and the letter of the same date from the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee giving more detail of the legal position; and believes that the priority now for the Government is to help the Iraqi people rebuild Iraq.

Young People and Democracy

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Angus Robertson: I beg to move,
	That this House notes the concern shared by all political parties at the lack of participation in the political process by young people and the decreasing turnout in elections throughout the country; welcomes the work of many charities, political experts, young people and organisations representing them, who have worked together in their belief that lowering the voting age would improve the quality of politics in the United Kingdom; and calls on the Government to legislate to lower the voting age for all public elections to 16 years.
	This is an issue whose time has comethe enhancing of the role of young people and democracy. Either we deal with that issue and change the way in which politics works, or we as politicians shall be damned to ever-falling turnouts and rocketing disengagement, especially among the recently enfranchised and society, or even both. That is clearly damaging to democracy, and unsustainable for the legitimate and important work of political parties. Unless we buck up our ideas and respond to the problem, it will be very difficult to fix.
	There is a range of general measures that we should support to boost younger people's interest in democracy. I believe that Members in all parts of the House support measures such as enhanced and attractive policies for younger people, improved use of the internet and information technology, and better outreach to schools and colleges by politicians and interest groups.
	One recent and overwhelmingly positive development in my constituency has been the establishment of a parliamentary youth internship programme in conjunction with local high schools. A victim of our own success, we now have a considerable backlog of students seeking to gain a few days' or weeks' experience in the holidays of how an MP's office works, and a better understanding of the parliamentary process. I strongly recommend the programme to other Members.

Lembit �pik: Does that not show that young people are not necessary uninterested in politics, and that when given the chance and not patronised they are very willing to become involved? Do not the tremendous success and the growth of UK youth parliaments provide further evidence of that?

Angus Robertson: I welcome the hon. Gentleman's supportive comments, and I shall come to that issue a little later.
	The general measures that I enunciated a moment ago are no substitute for dealing with the biggest outstanding issue that disconnects younger people from active democracy: the right to vote. In this Chamber in 1947, Winston Churchill famously said:
	No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time[Official Report, 11 November 1947; Vol. 444, c. 20607.]
	But what happens when there is a fundamental generational breakdown in democratic participation? That is the challenge we need to address today.
	I want to begin with a perhaps surprising word of congratulation to the Minister for what must go down in parliamentary history as the smallest ever Government amendment to a Scottish National party or Plaid Cymru motion. Some people have uncharitably suggested that if Thomas Edison had been an SNP member, he would have been described by the UK parties as a dangerous anti-candle activist. I am glad that Government Front Benchers have dispelled that myth today, at least for a short while, and I hope that the Minister will use his youthful zeal, as the second youngest Labour Member in the House, to withdraw the amendmentperhaps I am being a bit optimisticand that he will not be sent over the top to defend the indefensible by the fuddy-duddies, wherever they may be.
	The Minister has a tremendous chance to be on the right side of history this evening by helping to lead a change to the inevitablea lowering of the voting age to 16. Parliament should take a lead on this issue, despite the impending Electoral Commission report, to which the SNP and I have made submissions.
	My strong views on this subject have been long held, and the same is true of my party. My maiden speech in this House, in 2001, was on the subject of young people and democracy. Indeed, my predecessor, Dr. Winnie Ewing, the current SNP president, made her maiden speech in this House, in 1967, on the subject of lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. Of course, that came about, thereby allowing 81 current Members of this House to benefit directly from the last lowering of the voting age, which occurred in 1970. They include the Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes); and the former shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). Who is to say that the next crop of leading politicians are not being turned off such a career path by their inability to have their say? Why should we not enfranchise the 1.5 million 16 and 17-year-olds in the UK?

Rosemary McKenna: In the light of the Government's amendment, which makes it clear that all the issues are being addressed, perhaps the hon. Gentleman can explain why he chose this subject for a key Opposition day debate?

Angus Robertson: I am delighted that the hon. Lady raises this issue. The commitment of the SNP and Plaid Cymru to youth issues is demonstrated by the fact that, on the one day available to us to choose the subjects for debate, we have chosen that of young people and democracy. We have done so because it is our keenly held belief that it is an important issue, but I am not claiming that those in other parties do not also consider it important. Indeed, perhaps the hon. Lady will contribute to this debate later on.
	The lowering of the voting age has been the subject of much deliberation in the House of Commons. There was a private Member's Bill on the issue, which was sponsored by the hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green), who will be speaking for the Liberal Democrats. There were some early-day motions, including early-day motion 746 from the last Session, entitled Votes at Sixteen, which I co-sponsored. The wording of that early-day motion and of today's motion is almost exactly the same. That early-day motion had the support of 37 Labour Members, most Liberal Democrats, and almost all SNP and Plaid Cymru Membersas well as Conservative and Ulster Unionist Members. I hope that we can depend on the votes of all those signatories tonight. This is and should be a cross-party, non-partisan subject for agreement.

Martyn Jones: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that when the Welsh Affairs Committee reported on children and young people in Wales, one of its recommendations was to lower the voting age to 16? That was by no means supported by 100 per cent. of the evidence that we took, and even some young people said that they did not want it, but, on balance, the Committee decided that we should have it. However, I cannot see the point in going for it now, while the Electoral Commission is preparing its report. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will say why we have to do it this minute when the commission is to report very shortly.

Angus Robertson: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his interest in the subject and welcome the findings of the Welsh Affairs Committee and those of the Scottish Parliament's Local Government and Transport Committee, which also found that lowering the voting age to 16 would be welcomed. I believe that Parliament should be leading on this issue and I will come to that point later.
	This issue should unite hon. and right hon. Members in all parts of the House. Intellectually and ideologically we can all make the case for change. The nationalist perspective recognises the growing independence and self-determination of younger people. The Conservative perspective perhaps recognises initiative and entrepreneurship among younger people. The Labour perspective might recognise social inclusion and justice, whereas the Liberal perspective represents individual freedom of choice and social responsibility.
	Government Members, if not persuaded by my arguments, may be convinced by the English Minister for School Standards, the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Miliband), who recently told an audience of A-level students that lowering the voting age would be a logical reform:
	If it is right that you can get married at 16, pay taxes, join the Army, there is no case for saying you can't vote until you are 18.
	If that is good enough for the Minister, it is good enough for me. I certainly hope that it is good enough for Labour Members and that they will choose to support the motion in the Lobby.
	Prime Minister Tony Blair has signalled that he no longer opposes the lowering of the voting age to 16, so there is at least

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman may have realised his error. He should refer to hon. and right hon. Members in the normal way.

Angus Robertson: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for pointing out my youthful error.
	The Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), has signalled that he no longer opposes lowering the voting age to 16, so there is at least some consensus with Ken Livingston, Mayor of London, who strongly supports reform.

Tony Wright: One of the weaknesses of the hon. Gentleman's motion is that it does not include the question of candidacy, which is covered by the amendment. The Electoral Commission is studying both issues. Rather than approach the matter piecemeal, would it not be better to examine both aspects by supporting the amendment? What is the hon. Gentleman's position on the age of candidacy?

Angus Robertson: I am entirely open to equalisation of the right to vote and candidacy. It should be for electors to decide whether an individual is mature enough to represent them at any level of government. That does not negate my point that Parliament should take the lead in sending a signal to young people that their role in democracy is as important as that of anyone else.
	There is a long list of important organisations outside the House that support the proposed initiative. They include Article 12 in England and Scotland, Barnardo's, the British Youth Council, the Care Leavers Association, the Carnegie Young People Initiative, Charter 88, the Children's Rights Alliance for England and the Electoral Reform Society. The list goes on and on. Before today's debate, the SNP and Plaid Cymru approached several of those organisations. The British Youth Council was specifically mentioned earlier, and I am pleased to say that its vice-chairman, Richard Angell, released a statement in advance of our debate, stating:
	The British Youth Council supports the debate in parliament in trying to enfranchise more young people to vote, reduce the democratic deficit and empower more young people as citizens. The motion that will be debated on Tuesday shows from its sponsors that young people and adults alike, from all parts of the United Kingdom support modernisation of our democracy in this way. We call, as the national youth council in the UK, for the Government and all other Opposition parties to support this call and look to eradicate the inequalities that young people feel when it comes to the political process and let young people vote at 16.
	The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright) mentioned some of the reasons why it is right to lower the voting age, but Richard Angell widens the list in his submission by saying:
	Young people have a right to be able to vote from 16; they can get married, have sex, become a parent, smoke, drive and join the army before they can currently vote; this needs to be rectified.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: The hon. Gentleman has twice repeated the interesting list of things that one can do at 16, but as almost without exception they are all manifestly painful and grave mistakes, why is there any reason to expand the list on that basis?

Angus Robertson: The hon. Lady makes an important point. The most significant reason for having the right to votesome might say that it is also painfulis the necessity when earning to pay tax to the Government. I have always been brought up to believe in no taxation without representation. Many of the items on the list might be painful or unwelcome to people of any age, but I believe that those who have obligations to society should also have the right, especially in a democracy, to take a decision about who governs. I am sure that the hon. Lady would accept that.
	It was not only the British Youth Council that responded with a message in advance of this evening's debate. Penny Hollings, the national secretary of the National Union of Students, said:
	NUS believes that people at 16 should be able to exercise their democratic right to vote. Many decisions that directly affect them are being taken and they have no chance to influence these decisions. This is particularly unfair when we consider these 16-year-olds are allowed to get married, join the armed forces and pay income tax
	the point I made a few moments ago
	but not decide whether they agree with where that money is being spent.

Richard Younger-Ross: Are not some of the interventions from Labour Members rather curious, coming from a party that prides itself on extending the franchise and the rights of individuals? They seem to question the hon. Gentleman's purpose in seeking to extend the franchise to those who are currently disfranchised, but I cannot think of many issues more important than that.

Angus Robertson: The hon. Gentleman has made his point, but I would rather not go down the partisan route this evening because I am trying to persuade right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House to vote with the SNP and Plaid Cymru on this important motion. I will not therefore be diverted down the hon. Gentleman's route.
	We should reflect on clear examples of what has happened when the voting age has been lowered, to see what advantages it has brought It applies to several of Germany's Lander, which reduced the voting age for participation in municipal elections. In Hanover, for example, the turnout of 16 and 17-year-olds was higher than that of those aged between 18 and 35. Admittedly with limited evidence, I believe that lowering the voting age can bring about the bonus of dealing with the disconnection that I warned about in my introductory remarks.
	Enthusiasm for supporting democracy among 16 and 17-year-olds is evident wherever one chooses to lookfrom participation in, and support for, single issue campaigns to the recent demonstrations on Iraq. That has been recognised even by Downing street, with the Prime Minister making a special appearance on MTV to justify the decision to go to war with Iraq. I note with interest that the closing date has just passed in the competition by the Electoral Commission and MTV entitled Votes are Action. The competition was open to people aged between 14 and 24, and it challenged participants to come up with a creative response to the phrase Turn Opinion into Action. Perhaps MPs should tune into MTV and get inspiration from the competition entries. I suppose that I should declare that that is not a covert attempt to wangle a free ticket to next year's MTV music awards.
	My experience in my constituency bears out the theory that 16 and 17-year-olds are interested in democracy. I am sure that hon. Members of all parties have also had that positive experience. I regularly seek the views of modern studies pupils in the senior schools in my constituencythe Buckie, Elgin, Forres, Lossiemouth, Milnes and Spayside high schools, as well as Elgin Academy and Gordonstoun.
	The replies from students are detailed and convincing. On the question of lowering the voting age to 16, the responses have been overwhelmingand overwhelmingly in favour. That is the case elsewhere in the country: 80 per cent. of correspondents on the Young Scot website are in favour, and the comments to be found there are also instructive.
	Mojo writes:
	I am 16 and think that I should be allowed to vote, because I probably care more about politics than some people that can vote . . . I think that if the law treats you as an adult you, as an adult, should be able to have your say in the countryyoung people are the future!
	As was noted earlier, that view is not universal. JonnyG writes:
	But do you think that everybody who is 16 is responsible enough to use their voteI meando we really want the monster raving loony party voted into parliament? (or conservatives for that matter)
	There are mixed opinions, but I note with interest the summary of the big conversation forum. Apparently, it is a big conversation on voting age and youth apathy, and the biggest single group among those sampled supports lowering the voting age to 16.

Huw Irranca-Davies: I pledge my support to the principle of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. I firmly believe that the voting age should be lowered. People aged between 16 and 18 are often criticised for not being mature enough to vote, yet the same could be said about people who are much older. It is not so much a question of age as of maturity, and whether people look seriously at the political climate.

Angus Robertson: The hon. Gentleman has come as close as he dare to endorsing the views of the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru without getting into difficulty with his Whips. I welcome wholeheartedly the logic of the case that he makes.
	I am not in favour of limiting the franchise to any group above the age of 16, but I certainly do not think that 16 and 17-year-olds should be excluded.
	I do not want to leave the big conversation website just yet, as I want to refer to an interesting contribution from a person named Andy Bannister. He writes:
	A better step would be to consider why turnouts are fallinga general lack of respect in politics. When one watches the performance of politicians of all stripes in the House, is there any wonder? You act like a bunch of year-7s, cheering and booing, trying to score cheap points and refusing to accept anybody on the other side of the house might have a valid point. Grow up and act like the elected representatives you are, and respect might begin to return.
	With so much consensus so far this evening, I think that we will be able to offer a good example and show that Mr. Bannister's concerns are unfounded. That is the opportunity presented to the House this evening. We must lead the debate about young people and democracy in a consensual way. The Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru strongly support imaginative ways to encourage younger people's interest in democracy.
	There is no substitute for addressing the real and substantive issue of the voting age. Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru Members believe, along with many other hon. Members, that the voting age needs to be reformed. Parliament should lead, and it has the chance to do so tonight. I hope that, in the spirit of non-partisanship, hon. Members from all parties will vote with us and send a strong signal to younger citizens that their views really count.

Christopher Leslie: I beg to move, To leave out from Kingdom to end and add
	but notes that the independent Electoral Commission's review of voting age and candidacy age is soon to be published and that the Government will carefully consider its conclusions, alongside the work of other organisations.
	As the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) says, the participation of all people in our democracy is one of the most important issues that we can possibly discuss, and the participation of young people is especially important. The debate transcends party politics and crosses the political divide. All hon. Members have a collective responsibility to capture the imagination of our constituents, engage their interest and have an ongoing dialogue with all parts of society, young and old.
	The Government, and many other organisations, are working hard in a variety of ways to focus on engaging younger people in our political process. However, there is no quick-fix solution, and that is where we disagree with the approach adopted by the hon. Member for Moray, and in particular with the suggestion that lowering the voting age is the definite solution to low turnout by young people in elections. Our concise but perfectly formed amendment suggests that we should continue to examine the issue while bearing it in mind that the Electoral Commission is studying the impact of any such changes alongside the potential impact of other steps that we could take.

Huw Irranca-Davies: To row back rapidly, although I agree firmly in principle with lowering the voting age, we should not prejudge the issue. Like most hon. Members, I would never want to be accused of premature extrapolation.

Christopher Leslie: I am not sure about the allusion made by my hon. Friend, but I am glad that he has rowed back. The Electoral Commission is examining voting at 16, and it is prudent to wait for its report.

Matthew Green: The Government amendment mentions the Electoral Commission, but it does not say whether the Government will accept the commission's findings. If it comes out in favour of votes at 16, will the Government implement the policy?

Christopher Leslie: It is probably better not to be premature about the matter and to wait for the Electoral Commission's report to be published. At that point, we can decide whether we accept its advice and recommendation. Ultimately, the commission provides advice, but it is for Ministers, Parliament and the House of Commons to make final decisions, and I am sure that the debate will continue.
	We should remember why the issue is important in the first place. This point may be obvious, but good governance and high-quality future decision making depend on young people participating in elections and taking part in decision making and government. The situation is not a complete disaster. Some younger people are interested and even active in politics. Believe it or not, I was once a young Member of Parliament. In May, I will have been in continuous elected office for 10 yearsI was elected as a councillor in Bradford at 21, which was an honour and a privilege. I am glad that younger politicians are entering the political arena in all political parties, but especially in the Labour party.
	It is not possible to claim that all young people are apathetic and disengaged. Although we cannot generalise, people aged between 18 and 24 are comparatively less likely to vote than those from older age groups. As MPs, we hear time and again that many younger people are not interested in our political institutions and are not impressed by traditional forms of communication between candidates and electors. What are the solutions to those problems? The hon. Member for Moray and many of my hon. Friends suggest that lowering the voting age to 16 may be one solution. The suggestion is interesting and has been made by individuals in several parties, including the Labour party, over the years. The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs said as recently as December that we must be open-minded and listen to the arguments, and we have posed the question in our current big conversation.
	Voting at 16 might be an option, but although we are happy to encourage the debate, we must also recognise that there are problems. The House declined to support votes at 16 by 434 votes to 36 when the matter was last debated in 1999. Consequential questions about the wider age of majority might flow from a decision to allow voting at 16. We are open-minded on the issue, and the Electoral Commission will publish its report shortly.
	The commission is also looking closely at the age of candidacy, as not just voting but active participation in the political process matters. On candidacy, the minimum age for standing for election to Parliament was fixedI assure the House that this is trueby the Parliamentary Elections Act 1695, and the age of candidacy for local elections was set in the Local Government Act 1972. They do, therefore, seem overdue for review. In the meantime, the Scottish Parliament is considering the Local Governance (Scotland) Bill, which proposes reducing the age for standing in local elections from 21 to 18. Local elections are devolved matters, but we will follow the passage of that Scottish proposal very closely.
	Nevertheless, the Government believe that the challenge of voter engagement and poor turnout requires more than changes to the franchise or the age of candidacy. The key to increasing turnout among younger people is to stimulate their interest in politics and to demonstrate that participation is a worthwhile and effective use of their time. The issues and policy options offered by political parties are therefore crucial, and all Members of Parliament have a responsibility to persuade younger constituents that their voices count. I am pleased that the Labour Government are playing their part in focusing on that issue and taking action in several different ways.
	For example, we have the Yvote?/Ynot? campaign, under the auspices of the children and young people's unit, which has sought to gauge the views of younger people about the political process and how interest in it could be improved. We have had a tour of regional meetings involving hundreds of young people in discussion with 17 Ministers in total. A website funded by the Department for Education and Skills and the Hansard Society has been designed as an interactive resource for teaching. The UK Youth Parliament, which has already been mentioned and with which many hon. Members will be familiar, has received 165,000 of Government support this year. We have many other initiatives, including the very successful Scottish Youth Parliament, to which I know the First Minister has given his close support. That shows great promise, and we are happy to continue to encourage such projects.
	At local government level, in Scotland and in England and Wales, I know that councillors and council officials are working with schools and colleges to bring younger people into the decision-making process. In my own city, the council has supported the Bradford Youth Parliament, which involved elections of non-party candidates in secondary schools across the district. Young people were not only the candidates, but got involved in scrutineering and running the polling stations and the ballot. That was a worthwhile exercise.
	The Electoral Commission has also taken a lead in advising on policy. Since its creation in 2000, it has initiated a wide array of policy mechanisms, including the Votes are Power campaign, which sent birthday cards to those reaching 18, encouraging them to use their vote. A publication targeted at first-time voters, entitled An Easy Guide to Voting has been widely distributed. Another initiative has been a team of outreach workers, which has travelled across the country to raise awareness of the voting process with young people outside the school environment. The Electoral Commission is to be commended for that work.
	Perhaps the most significant change is in school education. In England, citizenship education is now part of the curriculum in both primary and secondary schools. Since September 2002, it has been a compulsory subject for 11 to 14-year-olds. Citizenship education has three interrelated elementscommunity involvement, political literacy, and social and moral responsibilities. We believe that citizenship education in England empowers young people to discuss and debate issues affecting them and helps to stimulate their active participation in society.
	In Scotland, while there is no statutory curriculum, I understand that the Scottish Executive have produced guidance that seeks to ensure breadth in the curriculum, so that teaching can touch on the duties and responsibilities of citizenship in a democratic society. In Wales, citizenship education forms part of the personal and social education framework implemented in September 2000. In Northern Ireland, I understand, my ministerial colleagues are considering proposals on citizenship education for school curriculums.
	Encouraging participation for all ages is not just about informing the electorate. There are also ways in which we can make voting easier, simpler and more convenient. We should continue to look at new ways of making the process and mechanics of casting a ballot more appropriate to modern lifestyles and try out ideas for taking the vote to the citizen, rather than requiring the citizen to overcome obstacles in order to voice his or her opinion.
	We debated all-postal voting pilots only yesterday. We should recognise the beneficial impact that that method may well have on turnout. It is also important to explore the possibilities offered by new technology, whether voting by telephone, internet, e-mail or even digital television, which might reach out to electors who might otherwise not go to the polling station. In short, electors should have as much choice as possible to decide how they cast their vote and which option is the most convenient for them. We aim to provide that greater choice, and piloting is a prelude to that.
	Whether in the political or the social realm, active citizenship by all in society is clearly a desirable goal from which we all benefit. Taking an interest in our communities, looking after our neighbours, reporting crimes to the police, volunteering for good causes, and activism in civic affairs and politics, even if it is simply voting or writing to councillors or MPs, or joining political parties, are the glue that helps our society stick together.

Pete Wishart: All that is fair enough, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to do more in this debating Chamber to engage young people? We have to start discussing issues that interest and excite them. Can the Minister think of anything that has been brought to the Floor of the House in the past year that has been of great interest to young people and has been a matter that they could positively engage in?

Christopher Leslie: I can think of many examples of such issues. It would be wrong to pigeonhole young people as supposedly interested only in particular niche issues. I think that young people are as interested in the quality of public services, the level of taxation, the nature of the constitution, international poverty and so on as any other member of society. It is how we engage with young people that makes the difference. It is clear that there is widespread support across all parties for engaging younger people in our democratic process, even if there is a slightly different emphasis among the parties on the precise way of doing it.

Angus Robertson: For the record, will the Minister say whether he agrees with his colleague the Minister for School Standards that, if someone can get married at 16, pay taxes and join the Army, there is no case for saying that that person cannot vote until he or she is 18?

Christopher Leslie: My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), in effect suggested that one does not have to be married or pay taxes in order to vote. These matters are not all interrelated; thankfully, they are mutually exclusive. We should look simply at the voting age.
	We are open-minded about the matter. I have not formed my own conclusions, and nor have the Government. We want to look at the debate that is taking place. In particular, it would be wrong to pre-empt the Electoral Commission's views and study. It would be sensible to proceed by looking at what it says. We shall no doubt return to the matter after that.
	With that in mind, I urge the House to decline the motion and support the Government's amendment.

Charles Hendry: I congratulate the Scottish Nationalists and Plaid Cymru on securing this debate, which is on an extremely important issue. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) on the way in which he introduced it, very constructively and eloquently. I think he was genuinely trying to work for a cross-party consensus. Whether he will manage to achieve it is, of course, another matter entirely.
	It is, as always, a pleasure to follow the Minister, who, in his normal, charming, Radio 2 easy-listening voice, can talk eloquently about virtually everything. I agreed with a great deal of what he said about the measures the Government have taken. I think there is genuine cross-party consensus that more must be done to address this issue.
	I was surprised that the Minister did not have a view on the main issue in the motion. The Electoral Commission asked all parties to submit their views and it is most peculiar that the Governmentor the Labour partydo not appear to have submitted an opinion. For the Government not to react until the commission produces its findings seems a peculiar way to proceed.
	I have no doubt as to the seriousness of young people's disaffection with politicsor, more accurately their disaffection with the political process. In general, as the Minister said, young people are extraordinarily interested in the issues; their dissatisfaction is with the way in which politicians, and especially the House, deal with many of those issues. Fewer than 40 per cent. of first-time voters voted in the last general election, and turnout is likely to be even lower in the European and local elections later this year. Pensioners are almost twice as likely as first-time voters to vote in a general election.
	I believe that, although the nationalists have correctly identified a problem, they have come to the wrong conclusion. Of course, some 16-year-olds are very ready to vote. Many Membersespecially the Ministerwere probably ready to vote when we were 10, 11 or 12 and we would have been delighted if the voting age had been reduced when we were young, but we had to wait. However, my experience of talking to youth groups and students throughout the country and from the straw polls that I have taken in schools and colleges shows that there is no clear majority in favour of change. Those who are politically involved and aware are certainly keen to see the voting age reduced, but that is not the case for the majority of younger people.
	Moreover, a voting age of 16 is not an international symbol of democracy. There are only nine countries where one can vote in general elections at the age of 16 or 17; they include Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Sudan, so the message is that people can vote at 16 as long as they vote for the one candidate on offer.

Angus Robertson: Perhaps the reduction of the voting age in German Lander is a new factor. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the democracy of Germany is comparable with dictatorships? Surely, democracies, too, can change and give 16 or 17-year-olds the option to vote.

Charles Hendry: Of the nine countries that allow voting at that age in general elections, four are dictatorships of one type or another and five are democracies. However, no European country allows it in general elections, although Germany allows it in local elections. The hon. Gentleman said in his opening comments that the voting age was the outstanding issue affecting young people, but that is not felt to be the case almost anywhere else in the democratic world.

Matthew Green: When we rightly gave women the vote almost a century ago, we were among the first countries to do so. Following the hon. Gentleman's logic, we should never have given women the vote on the basis that other countries have not done so. Why can we not lead the world on the reduction of the voting age?

Charles Hendry: In a moment, I want to discuss why that is a bogus argument and distracts us from the key issues that lead to young people being disaffected with politics and politicians.
	There is no common age of majority. One can do many things at the age of 18; for example, one can buy alcohol and obtain credit. In effect, people cannot drive until they are almost 18: most have almost reached that age before they pass their test. However, I want to take head-on the bogus arguments that have already been mentioned; for example, that one can join the Army at the age of 16. A 16-year-old can join the Army with their parents' permission, but they cannot be put on front-line duty until they are 17, or 18 for international duties. The reality is that most young people cannot freely join the Army until they are 18.
	The point has been made that people pay tax at the age of 16. My five-year-old pays VAT on the sweeties he buys with his weekly pocket money[Interruption.] He gets far too much pocket money. However, no one is suggesting that because he and other children pay VAT they should be entitled to vote, although he would probably think it was a good idea.

Adam Price: European Union visitors to the UK also pay VAT, but that is not an argument for them being given a vote. The distinction relates to income tax, which is based on being domiciled in the UK.

Charles Hendry: I understand the distinction that is being drawn, but the reality is that 90 per cent. of 16-year-olds do not pay income taxonly a small proportion of them do so. Those who have put the case for change to the Electoral Commission may want to consider the argument about no taxation without representation. If people pay tax, they should be entitled to vote, but that does not justify giving the vote to the overwhelming majority of that age group, to whom that does not apply.

Peter Luff: The historians in the House may correct me, but I believe that the original cry of no taxation without representation was applied to tea dutiesan indirect tax, not a direct tax.

Charles Hendry: My hon. Friend is, as ever, wise and well informed, and I am grateful to him for his support in these matters.
	Reference has also been made to the age at which people are allowed to get married. The situation is different in Scotland, but certainly in England and Wales, people can marry at the age of 16 only if they have their parents' consent. No one would suggest that people should be allowed to vote at the age of 16 only if they have their parents' consent. Such arguments do not apply generally. One in 500 girls and one in 1,000 boys get married at the age of 16. To trot out such things as though they were the norm is decidedly misleading, but we are finding that they are being used to try to turn our minds away from the real reasons why young people are not getting involved in politics and not taking an interest in what is going on.
	My belief is that young people are not voting because they do not see politics as being relevant or addressing the issues that concern them, as the hon. Member for North Tayside (Pete Wishart) was saying just now. Rather than considering an extension of the voting age, our priority should be to motivate the 60 per cent. of those who could vote for the first time but do not bother to do so to get out and use their votes.
	Charter 88 and the YMCA found in a survey in 2002 that 90 per cent. of 16 to 22-year-olds would be more likely to vote if the parties addressed the issues that matter most to young people. Even though a survey carried out by the children and young people's unit in 2002 showed that just 40 per cent. of 14 to 19-year-olds had some or a great interest in politics, it also showed that 76 per cent. of that age group thought that they should be taught more about politics while in school. So young people clearly have a great desire to have a better understanding of the way in which such issues are addressed.

Rosemary McKenna: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the argument that lowering the voting age increases participation is not sustained by the figures for those aged between 18 and 25? Participation is lower in that age group than in any other.

Charles Hendry: I entirely agree with the hon. Lady. No one has ever told me that they did not vote when they were 18 because they were not allowed to do so when they were 16. There is no connection between the two.
	We need to consider the issues that are of greatest concern to young people themselves. Many people say that young people are primarily concerned with the environment and international affairs, particularly in developing countries. That is of passionate importance to a few, but not to the majority of young people, who are concerned most about issues that are closer to home, such as their safety on the street. They are profoundly concerned about crime. One of the things that politicians so often get wrong is the language that we use in addressing those issues. Too often, the words that young people hear used in the House or that they read in the newspapers refer to young offenders, as though young people are constantly waiting behind the bus shelter for the next elderly lady to come along so that they can hit her over the head and steal her purse while they are waiting to daub the next bit of graffiti on the back of the wall.
	The reality is that young people are much more likely to be the victims of crime than any other section of the community, and we need to talk in a way that reflects that problem and their anxieties and that delivers the solutions that they view as realistic. That involves putting more police on the beat and, to an extent, a different attitude to policing, so that, when young people say that they have been attacked or that they have a problem, the response is not, Well, what were you doing wrong, then? We must address those issues constructively.
	The second issue that comes up consistently is that of facilities and transport. It is no wonder that young people have little faith in politicians when they see the youth clubs and youth organisations that they attend at risk of closing because of a complete lack of funds, when other departments round the corner are awash with funds.

Pete Wishart: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, because he is on to something. Does he agree that we have almost developed an us and them culture distinguishing between what we view as general society and young people, who are sometimes identified as a problem that must be dealt with and addressed? Cannot we do more to include them and to ensure that they are part of our political process? If we do not do so, we stand a good chance of alienating more and more people from the political process.

Charles Hendry: I could not agree more. We have to try to challenge the media perception that the majority of young people are inherently bad. The overwhelming majority of young people whom I meet in all places are inherently good and enthusiastic people who work hard for their communities. We have to change the language that we and newspapers use by showing a much more positive approach toward young people. After all, it is hard to understand why they should have much faith in the work that we do if we appear to have little faith in what they do in their lives.
	The third issue that comes up time and time again is education, which is not surprising. However, it is also not surprising that the young people who disproportionately voted for the election of a Labour Government in 1997 and 2001 are now disproportionately more disaffected with that Government than other voters as they see the Government breaking their manifesto commitments and wanting to charge students tens of thousands of pounds to go to university. [Interruption.] Labour Members may tut-tut, but three years ago the Conservative party was the third largest party on campus. This year, it is bigger than any other party, and probably bigger than the other two major parties combined. That has happened because of the education issue in particular, so for Ministers and Labour Back Benchers to brush it aside shows a lack of understanding about how young people feel.

Matthew Green: The hon. Gentleman talks about support on campuses. I am sure he is aware that the most recent MORI poll on the matterit conducts a yearly pollshows that the Conservatives have the third highest support with about 20 per cent of students' support. The Labour party is down at 34 per cent. and the Liberal Democrats have 38 per cent. support among students.

Charles Hendry: That is yet another example of why one should never believe opinion polls, although I understand that the Liberals have been working hard in universities as well.
	On education, young people are frustrated that great emphasis is put on universities and that not enough attention is paid to technical and vocational training, which many believe to be a more appropriate route to take. They want politicians to address those issues more seriously than they believe to be the case at present.
	We must consider not only those issues, but the way in which we relate to young people. I commend to hon. Members the work of the UK Youth Parliament, of which I am a trustee, as is the hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green). Anyone who attended the meeting that it held here last week will have been immensely impressed by the way in which the young people spoke, the coherence of their arguments and their positive approach to tackling the issues. I urge all hon. Members to engage more closely with the UK Youth Parliament.
	I also urge hon. Members to engage more closely with youth forums and councils in their constituencies. However, I emphasise that those forums and councils too often make presentations to local politicianscouncillors or otherwisewho listen patiently but go away and do nothing. If we want the bodies to take us seriously, they must see that there is genuine action as a result of such presentations.

Angus Robertson: Bearing in mind the fact that the British Youth Council has issued a call for as many hon. Members as possible to vote in favour of the voting age being lowered, will he and other Conservative Members do that?

Charles Hendry: I have already set out the reasons why it would not be right to lower the voting age at this time. Taking someone seriously does not mean automatically agreeing with everything they say. It means taking part in a constructive dialogue and debate. At the end of the day, young people will be more attracted to people who argue genuinely and sincerely from a given point of view than to those who they think will support them irrespective of what they say in the belief that that will win their votes.

Pete Wishart: We are all aware of the Electoral Commission report that is due to be published soon. If it states clearly that it believes that there is a case for giving the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds, will the Conservative party back that?

Charles Hendry: We will wait to find out the nature of the report. We produced a submission in which we said we would not reduce the voting age to 16, but that we would support a reduction in the age of candidature to 18. We will want to know about the nature of the report and the submissions that other bodies made before reaching our final conclusion, but at present we are not persuaded of the case for reducing the voting age.
	We need to listen constantly to young people if we want to be taken seriously, which is one of the reasons why we have set up a database of 4,000 voluntary organisations that work with young people. We e-mail the organisations every month to consult on matters that the party is considering. We are extending that practice to secondary schools, as it shows a willingness to use the communication methods that young people are using more and more. Most Members, with the possible exception of the Minister, grew up at a time when there were three channels on television. The Minister probably cannot remember the age when it was not possible to watch an evening's television without seeing some current affairs. There was news on every channel and one could not avoid it. Many young people growing up today watch television channels with no current affairs or news content. The most popular channels are E4 and Sky One, which have no current affairs presentation whatsoever, which makes it much more difficult for politicians to reach and communicate with young people. We must therefore make sure that we understand new technology and use it in a way that is not condescending.
	Above all, we must have face-to-face contact with young people. People's attitudes to politics and politicians is often changed when they have the chance to come to Westminster, look round Parliament and see how it works. They have a chance to meet their Member of Parliament and talk to them face-to-face about the issues that most concern them.

Patrick McLoughlin: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend about the importance of members of the public coming here. Does he accept that a downside of the new sitting hours is that they have substantially reduced the opportunities for school parties, certainly from outside London, to come and visit the House of Commons?

Charles Hendry: My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. From the perspective of my own constituency, we have to wait many months to get people in for school visits, if we can get them in at all, because of the problems caused by the new hours. I hope that the House will address that, but it is obviously a separate issue, so I shall return to the subject of our debate.
	I congratulate the nationalists on raising the issue, but lowering the voting age is a sideshow. Young people want politicians to listen to them and act on their concerns. If we can introduce policies that will make our communities safer for young people; provide more facilities for them and improve transport so that they can access those facilities; provide open access to higher education and improved vocational training; and show that young people's views are genuinely important to us and that we will act on them, they will give us an opportunity to be heard and we will find that they are willing to use their vote and express their political views.

Richard Taylor: I am a little hesitant, because according to the latest count I am the 17th oldest Member of Parliament, although I was encouraged when an hon. Member who is considerably older than me made an intervention.
	The Minister said that we should stimulate an early interest in politics. I could not agree more, but we are missing the pointthat the people who stimulate that interest are parents, relatives and teachers. I should therefore like to spend a few minutes discussing some of the things that put those people off politics, preventing them from transmitting an interest to children.
	The first factorthe lack of opennesswas discussed at great length in the previous debate and was one of the many things that contributed to my election to Parliament. Yesterday, The Times leader advocated Honest politics and the front page of The Independent said, Scientist was 'gagged' by No. 10 after warning of global warming threat. Allegations of gagging, if true, work against openness and honesty.
	The second factor that puts people off politics was exposed last week in the debate on the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill. The Government refuse to consider logical or reasonable amendments before a Bill goes to the House of Lords in order to leave themselves bargaining space for Lords amendments. That is like a second-hand car salesman who sets a high asking price that he can later reduce, and Labour Members clearly alluded to such conduct in that debate.
	Another example would be that of a debate on a very difficult issue that is derailed by being taken into the fields of party politics, of which the foundation hospitals Bill was an absolute classic. When this House considered Lords amendments to the Bill, we spent little time debating foundation hospitals; instead, it became an issue of party loyalty, and then of the supremacy of the House of Commons over the House of Lords. Politicians find it extremely hard to apologise or to make U-turns. During one of last Saturday's rugby matches, the commentator congratulated a referee on apologising for getting something wrong. It would be good to see politicians apologising sometimes, as we are not always right.
	The hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) mentioned the factors that specifically affect and interest the young. In that context, I would stress the importance of schoolteachers. When we visit schools in our constituencies, we encounter staggering differences. In those where the teachers do not take much interest, the kids are apathetic and uninterested. On my first visit, I could not get a spark out of them, and thought that that must be down to me. Then, I went to two more where they had a huge, spontaneous supply of questions on local and national issues, some of which I had to answer afterwards in writing. They ranged from what we actually do, my view of the war in Iraq and, of course, why the voting age is 18.
	At the end of the summer recess, the parliamentary education unit made a series of visits to Parliament, two of which I took part in because I was in London. The first involved a livewire group of kids, mainly from Sunderland, who had got up at the crack of dawn and got home late that night. They asked questions that demonstrated their interest in, for example, the involvement of women and ethnic minorities and why MPs have posh accents. Those in the second group were very different. For a start, they all had posh accents and were not interested in anything. The influence of teachers is crucial. If their interest can be rekindled, that will rub off on children. Lowering the voting age would help, because such issues would have relevance sooner in life.
	In 1944, Lord Beveridge wrote:
	Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.
	I would take that even further. Education in politics and democracy is absolutely essential for the maintenance of democracy.

Matthew Green: I, too, congratulate the Scottish and Welsh nationalists on choosing this topic for debate on one of their rare Opposition days. I commend the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) for his excellent attempt to avoid partisan politics and to win some consensus across the House.
	I was slightly bemused by the Minister's response. I am aware that many of his colleagues are firmly in favour of votes at 16, but having become Ministers or Parliamentary Private Secretaries they are forbidden to say so. I will refrain from naming them.

Angus Robertson: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is strange that although the Minister for School Standards can enunciate clear support for lowering the voting age to 16 or 17, the Minister cannot?

Matthew Green: I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman's example and not be cynical, but I am tempted a little down that route. It could be said that the Government have enough voices expressing both opinions and that, therefore, whatever the Electoral Commission's conclusion, they can say that they were of that view, but perhaps that is too cynical.
	There have been some welcome signs. The Prime Minister has moved from opposition to agnosticism, and I hope that he takes the next step. However, it was incumbent on the Minister to make it clear that if the Electoral Commission recommends reducing the voting age to 16I hope it will, because the arguments for so doing are overwhelmingthe Government will accept the recommendation. After all, they have asked the Electoral Commission to consider the matter and I presume that they are therefore sufficiently interested to take note of its conclusions. They pray the Electoral Commission in aid so often that I would expect the Minister to accept its recommendations.
	There is broad consensus that, whatever our views on voting age, it is logical that someone who is old enough to vote is also old enough to stand as a candidate. The electorate should be able to judge whether a candidate is sufficiently mature to be elected. I am glad that there is consensus on that and that Conservative Members, even if they do not support reducing the voting age to 16, agree that voting age and candidacy age should be the same. The Government did not make even that commitment although I suspect that the Minister probably agrees with the proposition. He has probably made up his mind and simply will not give us his conclusions.
	It is worth emphasising some of the reasons that have been expressed for reducing the voting age to 16, the most important of which is fairness. We regard citizens as old enough to pay direct taxation at 16 if they are in work. I would not go as far as Conservative Front Benchers, who suggested that people who pay taxes should have the vote, because the logical conclusion of their argument is that those who do not pay taxes should not have the vote. That would mean that many pensioners were taken off the voting registers.
	Sixteen-year-olds who are in work may have left home and may pay council tax. We judge them to be mature enough to play such a part in the state's life, yet we do not appear to believe that they are old enough to decide about the politicians who set their council and income taxes. Those who are old enough to contribute to the state if they are earning sufficient money are old enough to elect the politicians who determine the rates.
	Much has been said about turnout. The Electoral Commission's document cites some interesting studies, which show that 16 and 17-year-olds are more likely to use the vote than 18 to 25-year-olds. Evidence shows that those who start to vote continue to do so. There is therefore good evidence that reducing the voting age to 16 would increase the turnout in elections. However, we should not reduce the voting age simply to improve turnout. If we judge people to be old enough to pay taxes, they should have a right to vote.
	The Minister rightly mentioned citizenship education, to which several Members referred. It ends at 16 in Scotland and will end at that age in England. It is compulsory up to the age to 14 and can be continued until a person is 16, but a two-year gap follows. The Government should either provide for teaching citizenship until the age of 18 or reduce the voting age to 16. Teaching citizenship until the age of 16 and asking people to forget about it for the next couple of years before they get an opportunity to vote does not make sense. The turnout in general elections is considerably higher than that in local elections. Many people vote in general elections and no other elections. Some people who become 18 just after a general election are 22 before they exercise their vote for the first time. Bringing down the voting age so that it is nearer the age at which young people receive citizenship education would help to encourage people to vote and play an active part in society.
	A more philosophical point is that young people tend to behave well if they are given responsibility. If we try to make young people do something by bashing them over the head until they do it, they rebel and recoil against it. When they are given responsibility, however, they generally act very responsibly.

Christopher Leslie: The hon. Gentleman joined the Liberals.

Matthew Green: Actually, I did not join any political party until I was 23, so the Minister was already a councillor at the age at which I entered politics.
	Giving young people the vote at 16 would send a strong signal that we regard them as full members of society, and would encourage them to behave more responsibly. It would be a signal, not a panacea, but it would help. That chimes with what the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) saidI agree with much that he said, apart from his comments on the voting ageabout the them and us situation and the language that we use. Reducing the voting age to 16 would be a sign that we respect young people, and we can send that powerful message to help to draw different groups together.
	One argument that is used against giving 16 and 17-year-olds the vote is that they are not ready. However, as the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) suggested in an intervention, it is difficult to argue that someone cannot have the vote because they are not mature enough. That would take us down the dangerous and dodgy road of suggesting that people should take a test before being given the vote. Before the days of universal franchise, which the Conservatives did much to try to prevent, the amount of money people owned, or the value of their property, were used as voting thresholds, and, of course, only men could vote. The argument about not being mature enough was used against giving women the voteit was said that women could not possibly understand what they were doing. Those who use that argument about young people now would do well to read the Hansard report of debates that took place at the time when women were given the vote. They might find an uncanny resemblance between their arguments and those used in opposition to giving women the vote.

Angus Robertson: Were not almost exactly the same arguments used against lowering the voting age from 21 to 18? No one in their right mind would now advocate that people should not have the vote until they are 21.

Matthew Green: I agree with the hon. Gentleman's excellent point.

Roger Williams: My hon. Friend might be aware of the work of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, which interviewed several young people. Some of them said that they wanted to vote, but some said that they did not feel able to make a judgment. Surely, people who feel that they are confident enough to vote should be allowed to, while the others would not have to do so, because it would not be compulsory for them to vote.

Matthew Green: My hon. Friend makes an excellent and pertinent point.
	The Welsh and the Scots have been a little more prepared than the Government to engage in this process, although I shall not detract from what the Government have done. The fact that the Electoral Commission is carrying out its review is a welcome development, especially given the situation 18 months ago. At that time, I received a dismissive answer from the Prime Minister at Prime Minister's questions, suggesting that young people should not even be doing the things that I said they were, and he would not even meet a group of young people to discuss the matter. We must welcome the movement that the Government have made and I, for one, do not want to belittle that.
	I have seen another argument against lowering the voting age inbelieve it or notacademic submissions to the Electoral Commission, which were also sent to me. It is that 16 and 17-year-olds would automatically copy their parents. Perhaps the way to deal with that argument is to turn it on its head. If we carried out a poll among parents and asked them whether they thought that their 16 and 17-year-olds would automatically copy them, I think that we would be told very firmly that they would be more likely to do exactly the opposite. It is patronising to suggest that young people cannot think for themselves, and that all they can do is what their parents tell them to. Fortunately, no one used that argument in the debate today, probably because even those in the Chamber who oppose the lowering of the voting age to 16 are sensible enough to see the flaws in it.
	I am delighted that the Scottish and Welsh nationalists used their Opposition day debate for this subject. It is an important matter, and we have had only a few opportunities to discuss it before. I think that its time is coming, but I am sorry that the Government are still sitting firmly on the fence. I had hoped that the Minister would at least say that, if the Electoral Commission recommended a reduction in the voting age, the Government would pursue the issue. Clearly, however, that would be a step too far for this Minister, even if it is not a step too far for the Minister for schools standards, who has clearly made up his mind on this already

Alex Salmond: He is leading the debate.

Matthew Green: Indeed, he is leading the debate on this issue in the Government.
	This has been a timely debate and, even if the Government numbers win tonight, I suspect that with the publication of the Electoral Commission's report on 26 March we shall see votes at 16 recommended. Such a recommendation is long overdue; it is about time that we began to bring our political system into the 21st century.

Wayne David: Before I was elected to the House, I worked for the youth service in Wales, particularly the voluntary youth service. One of the initiatives with which I was involved was the Young Voice/Llais Ifanc initiative, which I helped to establish for the National Assembly for Wales. That initiative has now become Funky Dragonthe Children and Young People's Assembly. It was an important initiative because it was, and still is, peer-led. It is about facilitating the young people of Wales to get together and express their views and priorities to the decision makers in Wales, building on the excellent work that has been done by the local authority youth forums there.
	Among the things that impressed me about the initiative was that, contrary to what many people think, young people have plenty of opinions and ideas. What annoys them most is the fact that older people do not credit them with having those views, which are often not taken seriously or acted upon as a result. Those young people wanted not a grandiose debating society, but a facility in which they could express their views and then see action being taken.
	One of the consequences of this ongoing initiative is that the National Assembly for Wales now has to consider how it relates to young people when it makes decisions. Its elected Members recognise that it can be counter-productive if young people are provided with a means to express their views and nothing happens as a result. What is required is a change of culture, so that young people's viewsalong with the views of other people in societyare taken into account and can become part of the policy-making process. That is beginning to happen in the Welsh Assembly.
	The same needs to happen in other parts of the United Kingdom and in relation to central Government. Great strides have been made throughout Britain with the UK Youth Parliament, but that is not enoughwell financed and well structured though that forum is. We need a mechanism to ensure that when the Government's policy-making structures consider the issues concerned, the views expressed by young people are taken into account.
	One surprising discovery that I made in working closely with young people was that many of them did not think it at all important to have the voting age reduced to 16. Some did, of course, but many saw it as irrelevant. Indeed, some young people saw it as some kind of sop and a means to incorporate them into the current political structures. They considered more important the introduction of genuine mechanisms that allowed their views to become part of the broader decision-making process.

Julie Morgan: Does my hon. Friend agree that one genuine way of involving children and young people related to the appointment of the Children's Commission for Wales, as they took part in the whole of the appointment system and had an equal voice in choosing the person for the job?

Wayne David: Indeed. That is a good practical example of how young people can be genuinely empowered. Young people greatly appreciate the fact that they were part of that process and that their views were taken into account. That is one reason why the Children's Commissioner is proving to be extremely successful. Other parts of the United Kingdom can learn from the example in Wales.
	There is a strong case for reducing the voting age to 16. I simply point out, however, that we should not assume that all young people regard that as of central importance. Many young people are concerned about a far broader range of issues and want their views taken into account. Therefore, while it is important that the issue is considered, it is not the be-all and end-all of demands from young people. It must not be used as an easy way out for decision makers. The view that reducing the voting age is the end of the debate, at which point we can go away contented that we have done something to help young people, is very patronising. It could also be counter-productive, as young people will see through it. We need a broader and more fundamental debate on this issue; above all, our starting point must be to respect the views of young people and to ensure that their views are always taken seriously.

Peter Luff: I am grateful to the nationalist parties for the opportunity to discuss the important issue of participation in our democracy. We take a large amount for granted in that respect, and I am grateful to my constituent, the Bishop of Worcester, for drawing to my attention the participation of criminals in the democratic process. Perhaps we need to challenge and examine much more carefully the assumption that criminals should be denied the vote.
	I am therefore grateful for the opportunity to discuss the involvement of younger people in the democratic process. All Members know that one of the single most dangerous issues facing British democracy is young people's apparently declining enthusiasmI say apparently for good reasonsfor the British democratic system. That should worry us all greatly. We must look for ways of re-engaging young people in the process.
	I am reluctantly coming to the view that perhaps I am getting old. I watched a Question Time last week with a group of younger British politiciansyounger even than the Minister, if such a thing can be imaginedand I was struck by the very different tone of voice that they were using to discuss political issues: a much more relaxed, informal and inclusive style, from which the House could learn something.
	To leap from the various views expressed in the Chamber today about the importance of involving younger people to the idea that they must be given the vote is a dangerous conclusion, however, as the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) implied in his remarks. Certainly, all the soundings that I have taken in the many schools that I have visited in my constituency do not indicate great enthusiasm for it. The soundings that my district council has taken, probably as part of the response to the Electoral Commission's work at present, suggest no enthusiasm for it either. What people want is to be listened to, engaged and involved, and not necessarily to have the vote, which, as the hon. Member for Caerphilly said, could be seen as a sop or a patronising approach to the problems that we agree exist in relation to engaging people in the process.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) rightly drew attention to our problems with the media. Most of the media to which young people now listen tend to ignore us, while the rest trivialise us. The national broadsheets are a scandal in this regard. When I, like my hon. Friend, was an enthusiastic young political anorak aged 12, 13 and 14, I used to buy The Times and The Daily Telegraph and read a whole page about Parliament on a regular basis. [Hon. Members: Oh!] I know, I know; it is sad but true.
	There were some interesting and important debates to read about at that time. It was a great period in British politics. It is not possible to read about such things now, because the media either ignore us or, when they do report us, trivialise us. It must be said, thougha number of Members have said it todaythat we give the media quite a lot of ammunition with which to trivialise us. My neighbour, the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor), made some important remarks about the seriousness with which we, and the Government, take political debate. If we listened to more of those lessons, young people might take us more seriously.

Pete Wishart: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when young people look at this place, what they mostly see are middle-aged, middle-class, grey-suited men? I say that as someone who is 42 today.

Peter Luff: As one who turned 49 a couple of weeks ago, I wish the hon. Gentleman a happy birthday. Even ageing rock stars grow old, as Bill Nighy has reminded us. But enough of this, given the time available. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the way in which we behave here is often inappropriate.
	I deeply regret the fact that Prime Minister's Question Time is the only parliamentary programme that most people watch, because it is the least edifying part of our proceedings. Watching a broadcast of this debate would probably be more edifying for most young people than what will happen here tomorrow, in a few hours' time.
	I agree about the importance of youth parliaments, but I must tell the hon. Member for Caerphilly that I do not think they have enough resources. I hope that they will attract more sponsorship. I find engaging with a youth parliament surprisingly difficult in practical terms. I am notified of events much too late, and I do not receive replies to letters. Because of the annual election cycle for young people in my constituency, I find it difficult to establish a relationship with them. Such arrangements need much more support, both financially and from Members of Parliament.
	We have a crucial role to play as ambassadors for politics through our involvement with schools. I believe that every Member takes that role very seriously. I can honestly say that some of the challenging questions posed to me by young people aged 15 and 16 are among the best and most perceptive that I am ever asked. They are not tainted by the prejudice and experience of years. This morning, a young man called Tom, from Prince Henry's high school, interviewed me on the telephone for a newspaper competition in which his school is participating. His questions were worthy of Jeremy Paxman. I was subjected to an exceptionally intelligent grilling from someone aged only 15.
	The Minister pointed out that there were all sorts of ways for us to engage with young people. He described what I regard as the gimmicks involved in that process: e-mails, text messaging and digital television voting. I do not think that that deals with the fundamental issue, which is what we say to young people and how we say it, rather than the means we use to communicate with them. Although I approve of the fact that, typically, young people are involved with the same issues as the rest of society, inevitably the emphasis is sometimes a bit different. The current debate about university education is one example of something in which young people take an interest; other examples are environmental, third-world and animal-welfare issues. If we could only talk to them about those subjects in language that they understand and in a non-partisan way, we would gain their respect.
	I do not believe that it is right to reduce the voting age to 16, but I think that we must engage young people much more in the political processnot just 16-year-olds but those aged 12, 13, 14 and 15. They all have views that are worth listening to. What we must do is make the prospect of voting at 18 exciting. So many good things in this life are worth waiting for; the tragedy is that most young people in Britain today do not think that engagement in the political process is worth waiting for.

Adam Price: We have had a thoughtful, considered and mature debate, which is perhaps uncharacteristic of this place, as the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) suggests. I am sure that normal service will be resumed in time for Prime Minister's questions tomorrow.
	It is 35 years since Parliament last voted to lower the voting age, and as the Minister said, it is more than 300 years since we examined the question of candidacy age. Even at the grindingly slow place of constitutional reform in the United Kingdom, the issue is certainly overdue for revisiting.
	It is certainly a pleasure for Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party to be able to divide the House on this issue for the first time in five years, and it will be interesting to see whether there has been a shift in opinion. Disgracefully, last time, the motion was lost by a ratio of 10 votes to one. We have witnessed a sea change in some quarters, and it will be interesting to see how that is reflected in both the spirit and the letter of tonight's vote. Three independent studies have supported a reduction in the voting age in the past five years: the Kerley report in Scotland; the Sunderland Commission in Wales; and the Local Government Commission for England. Two Select Committees in this place have supported such a reduction, as have subject committees in the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales, and the human rights committee of the legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland.
	Even Government Members have been falling over themselves to embrace the radical, new and progressive idea of reducing the voting age. Sadly, they do not include the Minister, as we have heard tonight. He seems to be taking his lead from the Prime Minister. In January 2002, the Prime Minister opposed the idea with a characteristic shrug, saying that he was not sure that we would always want 16-year-olds to do all the things that they are capable of doing. However, a few months ago he said that people grow up a lot more quickly now, and that there are many things that 16-year-olds can do, so why should they not be able to vote? The Prime Minister's volte face seems to have led to agnosticism, at least on this issue.
	I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) on introducing the debate with his customary panache and good humour, which was welcomed on both sides of the House, and I thank the Minister for his response. There was certainly consensus on the importance of engaging with young people. The problem with participation in politics is not confined to young people. We accept that there is no panacea or quick-fix solution to the entire problem, but today's debate is an important step in the right direction in terms of re-engaging young people with politics.
	The Minister said that it would be prudent to wait for the Electoral Commission report, but we have been waiting for it for some time. The consultation ended in October and the publication date has been moved three times. I should be magnanimous and point out that it was a Labour Government who reduced the voting age the last time, with Plaid Cymru and SNP support. If the Government are to act on the Electoral Commission's recommendations on voting age or on candidacy, will they ensure that such changes are in place in time for the next UK general election? The then Labour Government ensured, through the Representation of the People Act 1969, that such changes were in place for the 1970 general election. We do not want simply a manifesto pledge; we want action, so that the current generation of 16 and 17-year-olds will be able to vote.
	Perhaps the natural generosity of spirit of the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) was slightly hemmed in by Conservative policy on this issue, but there was some agreement. He was being a little mischievous in pointing out that the voting age is lower in Cuba, North Korea and Iran, where turnout is indeed higher, although perhaps not for reasons that we would like to support. However, there is evidence that the lower voting age of 15 in Brazila high proportion of whose population is below the age of 18has an invigorating effect on that country's democracy.
	I thank the hon. Members for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor) and for Mid-Worcestershire for turning the question around. Politicians, political parties and the House should address the culture of our democratic institutions. Reducing the voting age is only one step among a panoply of measures to make democratic politics more inclusive. The hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green) has long led the charge for the Liberal Democrats. His point was well made thatwithout meaning any disrespect to hon. and right hon. Members who take a different viewsimilar arguments were made against extending the franchise to the working class in the 19th century and to women in the last century: it was doubted whether individuals were mature enough to cast their votes wisely.
	The arguments in favour of lowering the voting age, which are supported by many youth organisations and are well understood, include consistency. Many 16-year-olds sleep together, marry without parental consent in Scotland and have children. Sixteen-year-olds can become company directors, be tried by jury in a Crown court and be locked up. They can even change their name by deed poll.
	Thirty-two per cent. of 17-year-olds pay income taxa not insignificant proportion. If it is proper that they should do so, surely they should have a stake in society and the right to decide how their taxes are spent. Some young people may not have wanted their taxes spent on the war in Iraq or for other purposes. The Government should be congratulated on creating so much anger and a new enthusiasm for politics among some young people. There is a broad consensus that we all need to engage and to examine the culture of our political parties. Now is the time to consider reducing the voting age, because we need to crystallise the energy, passion and enthusiasm that young people have for political issues.

Anne McGuire: As someone who was not allowed to vote until the age of 21I know that I do not look itand remembers only one television channel rather than the three mentioned by the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), I found this an enjoyable debate in many respects. Contributions from all parts of the House have been thoughtful in addressing an issue that ought to concern us all, regardless of our age or political party.
	However, in concentrating on lowering the voting age, perhaps the House has lost focus on an issue that I hoped it would debatethe abysmal turnout by the current cohort of young people between the ages of 18 and 24. I would have welcomed significantly more emphasis on that aspect. The hon. Member for Wealden pointed out that only 39 per cent. of those aged 18 to 24 voted in the 2001 general election, whereas 70 per cent. of 65-year-olds did so.
	Other issues were worthy of exploration. Of all age groups, young people are least likely to register to vote. There are a variety of reasons for non-registration. Without being too party political, I think that we are still reaping the legacy of the poll tax and the registration issues that it posed. We have heard about some of the many reasons why people will not registeralienation from the political system, deliberate avoidance and so forth.

Alex Salmond: I agree with the Minister, but one reason why we lost so many people, particularly young people, from the register stems from the fact that in most Scottish constituencies there is no longer a personal canvass. If the franchise were lowered to 16, when people are mainly still at school and can be readily identified, it would assist in the process of getting people registered.

Anne McGuire: I am not sure that that would solve the long-term problem, because people move around and there are all sorts of reasons why people come off the register. There is a danger of those who support the reduction of the voting age to 16 undermining their own case by using such arguments: it must be right because it is right, not because it will increase turnout or make registration easier. Electoral returning officers can canvass personally, and many do. Certainly the Scotland Office, working with the Electoral Commission and electoral registration officers, is examining some of the concerns expressed in the House and elsewhere about the perception of under-registration.

Angus Robertson: Briefly, for the record, we now know that the Prime Minister is agnostic on the issue of lowering the voting age; that the Minister for Schools Standards is in favour; and that the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Leslie), who opened the debate for the Government, has not yet made up his mind. May I therefore ask the Minister about her position? Is she in favour of lowering the voting age to 16yes or no?

Anne McGuire: The Labour party has specifically highlighted the reduction of the voting age in the big conversation: we are a listening party on the issue. My one criticism of today's debate is that it is unfortunate that our discussions are so close to the Electoral Commission's report on its findings and analysis. I look forward to having a full and frank debate on the reduction of the voting age after the Electoral Commission has reported.
	I should like to deal with a few of the issues raised in the debate. The hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green), among others, mentioned taxation. I am certainly pleased that, in this country, individuals' right to vote is not determined by whether they are married, sleeping with someone, receiving benefits or paying taxation. I believe that it is an intrinsic right, albeit at a threshold in respect of age, that is unrelated to any other aspect of being citizens of this country. We confuse the issues when we start to make those linkages. It is not about the Boston tea party or whether young people in Scotlandbut not in Englandcan get married at 16 without parental consent. It is all about whether the case for voting at a certain age is worthy in its own right. I hope that we will properly debate that when

Adam Price: rose

Anne McGuire: I have only a few minutes left, so it must be a very short intervention, which might be difficult for a Welshman[Interruption.]

Adam Price: When the Minister says that we should have a full debate following the publication of the Electoral Commission report, is she committing the Government to a debate on the Floor of the House?

Anne McGuire: The hon. Gentleman, charming though he isI think that all Welshmen are charmingwill not seduce me into predetermining what Government business will be dealt with on the Floor of the House. It was a nice try, nevertheless.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) brought the wealth of his own experience in youth work to our debate. Those who have worked with young peopleI include myself in that categoryknow that many issues affect their lives and that they are interested not so much in whether they should be allowed to vote at 16 or 17, but in a whole plethora of issues, which we, as the Government, have addressed.
	The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) made a thoughtful contribution, although the terrible image of him at the age of six sitting by his fireside and reading Hansard does not sit well with his current politics. Generally, though, the House has agreed that we must focus on issues that are important to young people. We must go beyond the mechanics of democracy and deal with the outcomes of the democratic process.
	I want to go on record as saying that the Government have dealt with some of the great issues affecting young people. In my experience, one of the most debilitating problems faced by young people was long-term youth unemployment. The new deal and other aspects of the Government's employment policy have almost obliterated youth unemployment, and we have established modern apprenticeships in Scotland. We need to talk about young people's issues, and not just mouth the platitudes for which so many of them criticise us.
	I want to comment on some of the initiatives that have been taken in Scotland, some of which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs mentioned when he opened the debate. Currently, the Local Governance (Scotland) Bill is going through the Scottish Parliament. It will reduce the required age for local government candidates in Scotland. I think that that is a step forward.

Pete Wishart: rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
	Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to

Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question:
	The House divided: Ayes 50, Noes 346.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments):
	The House divided: Ayes 310, Noes 10.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	Resolved,
	That this House notes the concern shared by all political parties at the lack of participation in the political process by young people and the decreasing turnout in elections throughout the country; welcomes the work of many charities, political experts, young people and organisations representing them, who have worked together in their belief that lowering the voting age would improve the quality of politics in the United Kingdom; but notes that the independent Electoral Commission's review of voting age and candidacy age is soon to be published and that the Government will carefully consider its conclusions, alongside the work of other organisations.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Mr. Deputy Speaker: For the convenience of the House, I propose to take together motions 3 to 12.
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6)(Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Local Government

That the draft Local Elections (Ordinary Day of Election 2004) Order 2004, which was laid before this House on 29th January, be approved
	That the draft Local Authorities (Conduct of Referendums) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.
	That the draft Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.[Vernon Coaker.]

Representation of the People

That the draft Representation of the People (Combination of Polls) (England and Wales) Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.
	That the draft European Parliamentary Elections Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 5th February, be approved.[Vernon Coaker.]

Social Security

That the draft Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers' Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 28th January, be approved.
	That the draft Children (Leaving Care) Social Security Benefits (Scotland) Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 4th February, be approved.[Vernon Coaker.]

Employment Tribunals

That the draft Employment Act 2002 (Dispute Resolution) Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 20th January, be approved.[Vernon Coaker.]

Police

That the draft Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 (Renewal of Temporary Provisions) Order 2004, which was laid before this House on 12th February, be approved.[Vernon Coaker.]

Legal Services Commission

That the draft Community Legal Service (Scope) Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 12th February, be approved.[Vernon Coaker.]
	Question agreed to.

WELSH GRAND COMMITTEE

Ordered,
	That
	(a) the matter of the Budget Statement and its implications for Wales be referred to the Welsh Grand Committee for its consideration;
	(b) the Committee shall meet at Westminster on Wednesday 24th March between ten minutes to Nine o'clock and twenty minutes past Eleven o'clock and between Two o'clock and Four o'clock to consider the matter of the Budget Statement and its implications for Wales, under Standing Order No. 107 (Welsh Grand Committee (matters relating exclusively to Wales)).[Vernon Coaker.]

PETITIONS
	  
	Streethouse School

NOTHING

NOTHING

Jon Trickett: I present a petition of almost 400 parents and friends of Streethouse school, the number of pupils at which has grown rapidly over recent years, which has led to concerns over health and safety owing to a lack of space.
	The petition states:
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Department for Education and Skills to consider proposals to either expand the school or build an additional one to cope with rising pupil numbers.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

Weymouth Transmitter Upgrade

Jim Knight: I have pleasure in presenting a petition initiated by Mark Probin of Weymouth HiFi and signed by more than 1,100 of my constituents. Indeed, many continue to sign it online by visiting www.wewantdigital.co.uk.
	The petition
	Declares that access to the licence fee-funded Freeview service is non-existent in the Weymouth area. Constituents are left with no choice but to purchase a Sky box if they want to receive digital channels. Constituents in South Dorset only get four channels for the licence fee, whereas elsewhere they get a myriad of others.
	The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to prioritise getting the Weymouth transmitter upgraded and eliminate the digital divide in this part of Dorset. The petitioners further request that the Government take action to upgrade the transmitter and complete the digital 'switchover' well before its deadline of 2010 and that the Secretary of State, in reviewing the BBC Charter, should stipulate that all services should be made available to all licence payers within a reasonable period.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

RUGBY UNION

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Vernon Coaker.]

John Randall: I welcome the opportunity to speak on rugby, although many eminent parliamentarians with rugby careers might be better suited to speak on it. There are internationals in the House, and I believe that there is even a Cambridge blue. I remember my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) once telling me how Vaseline saved his ear in a match against the All Blacks, but it would perhaps be wise not to go further down that line.
	I am not guilty of opportunism and am not exploiting the popularity and success of the English team in the World cup. In my time, I played rugby, and I reached the pinnacle of my career as captain of the third XV at school, although injury prevented me from playing very much that season. In those days, I was a sleek three-quarter, although I could now be an honorary member of the front row club. Latterly, I have become a keen supporter and spectator of the game, but I try not to be an expert, as many people do when they grow grumpier and older. I am proud to be a vice-president of Uxbridge rugby football club and a member of Saracens rugby football club. I am a keen supporter of Saracens as well and acquired a season ticket as a direct result of the club's involvement in a community programme for schools, including my son's school.
	The Minister for Sport and Tourism will be aware that all Zurich Premiership clubs share a strong commitment to community involvement. That involvement is not just domestic, and I pay tribute to John Broadfoot of IRB SOS Kit Aid, which accepts old kit from players of all ages and sends it overseas, originally to Romania, but now to Georgia, Moldova and Bulgaria as well. That project deserves immense support.
	A great deal of the English team's success in recent years has been put down to the professional era. Many people regret the passing of the amateur era, but as long as we do not lose the spirit of rugby, I do not share that regret. I pay tribute to all the club owners who have invested in their clubs and poured money into them. They have built up the sport, and deserve a great deal of credit for the national team's current success. I shall concentrate on English rugby, mainly because I have discovered that sport is a devolved matter, but I hope that the Government will do whatever they can to encourage rugby in Scotland and Wales. Rugby is a religion in Wales, and I am sorry that it has not enjoyed the success in the past few years that it once had. I hope that it has more success, but not necessarily in the next fortnight.
	There is some regret, as I said, about the transition to the professional era. I am talking about rugby union, but my comments apply equally to rugby league. I have become more interested in rugby league as a result of the association between Brunel university and the London Broncos, and have been impressed by the Broncos' community involvement. In many respects, therefore, my remarks apply to rugby league as well. An essential part of rugby is the spirit in which it is played. At all levels, teams applaud one another off the field, whereas there is less sportsmanlike behaviour in other sports. As a supporter, I appreciate the facts that supporters can mix freely and that alcohol is allowed in the ground. Indeed, one might almost say that it is encouraged, and it does not seem to have an ill effect on people's behaviour. All sport is important for young people. I have become fed up hearing about Government initiatives on obesity, for obvious reasons, but when I was young I did not have the problem that I have nowI blame that on sitting in this place for long hours.
	The great thing about rugby, or any team game, is the team spirit. When watching my son play, I have noted the amazing amount of energy that can be burned up. He is thereby reduced to an almost passive state by the end of the afternoon, which is important for young people, particularly in our household.
	As we continue to bathe in the glow of the recent wonderful victory, now is the time to tap into renewed enthusiasm for the game. Much must be generated by the sport itself, but there is a role for the Government, and I want to outline some ways in which they could help. On Friday, my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) had the Second Reading of his Promotion of Volunteering Bill. I listened avidly to his excellent speech and discovered that the Bill contains measures that would help many sports and activities. Principally, it might ease the litigation culture by introducing a statement of inherent risk. Without repeating the argumentsI am sure that the Minister will have a look at them if he has not yet had time to do soI urge the Government seriously to consider that. It is about time that we as a society recognised that accidents can and do happen, and that if we constantly try to get rid of them we will have a bad effect on some of our sports and outdoor activities.
	The Government can play a role in encouraging schools to take up rugby instead of giving it up, as some have for the reasons that I mentioned. All sports should be encouraged, and, without making a party political point, we know that facilities and playing fields are a key theme in that. Those facilities are as important for the top-flight clubs as they are for schools. That is why I commend the concept of a rugby trust, which is being modelled on the very successful Football Trustnow known as the Football Foundation.
	Premier Rugby Ltd., the umbrella organisation for 12 professional clubs, is seeking funding over the next 10 years to build rugby stadiums and improve facilities at existing professional clubs. That funding would create a virtuous circle whereby better stadiums would encourage more spectators, derive more promotional revenue from sponsorship and hospitality, create improved community sporting facilities and infrastructure, encourage bigger and better community programmes, increase participation, and further enhance the professional playing and coaching pool that underpins England's future international success. It would also allow clubs to expand their existing facilities and commitments to community sports and to health and social inclusion programmes.
	Over the past seven years, Premier Rugby has privately invested 120 million in developing and growing the sport, and it is prepared to invest the equivalent investment that is being sought by the Government if the Government are prepared to support the launch of a trust or an alternative funding solution. Premier Rugby has spoken to all the game's stakeholders who are keen to work together on the proposed trust, including the Rugby Football League.
	In recent years, rugby union has not had its fair share of the funding cake, although I certainly do not begrudge other sports the funding that they have received. The following figures cover the period 1995 to 2003: footballI had better say association football in this contextreceived well over 230 million, athletics more than 190 million, hockey 109 million, and basketball more than 50 million. Rugby union has received only 46 million.
	The Government have been helping. Only today, I received news of Sport England's 1 million boost for the Sweet Chariot programme. I do not want to give the Minister a hospital pass by asking him to have a chat with his right hon. Friend the Chancellor, but the Rugby Football Union has raised with me a taxation issue that applies to governing bodies generally. The RFU feels that it is penalised in two areas: first, costs relating to supporting community clubs, either directly or via the resources of community rugby facilities, are not wholly tax deductible; and secondly, the majority of costs relating to the construction of, and structural modifications to, the stadium are not eligible for capital allowances. The RFU therefore believes that it pays disproportionately high tax, and that that is especially absurd, given the benefits of the game to the community. It believes that there is an overwhelming argument for allowing national governing bodies in general, and especially the RFU, to be fully exempt from taxation. I expect that to go down as well at the Treasury as a Jonny Wilkinson drop goal in certain bars in Earl's Court.
	The top clubs have financed most of the great steps forward in the game and the high-quality community programmes. Now is the time to capitalise on the game's success. The premiership clubs alone cannot meet the costs; they need and deserve Government support.

Richard Caborn: I congratulate the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) on securing the debate. He has shown that he is no Johnny-come-lately on the subject of rugby. He has graced many a park with his rugby union skills. Although my rugby career is not as illustrious as his, I played a little rugby at scrum half for Hurlfield comprehensive school and had a few trials with a Sheffield club, but soccer took over and I went on to play the beautiful game.
	The hon. Gentleman's support for rugby is welcome. I know that he is a keen Saracens supporter. I go to see Rotherham play occasionally. Both our teams languish in the bottom half of the leagueindeed, my team is probably a little below Saracens. We need a few points to stay there, but we must wait and see what the rest of the season brings.
	The hon. Gentleman widened the debate to include participation in sport. Any opportunity for the House to debate sport is welcome.
	There have been a few upsets. I believe that Ryanair's latest marketing ploy is to run a trip to Dublin for 19.13. The mighty fell but I have no doubt that they will come back. I hope that that will happen in Paris when I shall watch the match with the French Minister for Sport.
	Let us consider the world cup. It is interesting to reflect that we last believed that there would be a great renaissance in rugby union in 1991 when Will Carling's team showed what England could do and dominated world rugby. It was arguably one of the best sides around at the time. Unfortunately, we did not beat the Australians in 1991 and we were therefore unable to capitalise on that fantastic side. We beat the Australians in the final in 2003, and that has done a considerable amount for rugby.
	The hon. Gentleman said that he also liked rugby league. I believe that the oval ball generally gained from the tremendous win in Australia. My hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) is a great rugby league fan and he told me that participation has increased in rugby league on the back of events in Australia. It was the first English win in a world championship of a major team sport since 1966, when we won the World cup. We can capitalise on that.
	Rugby union became a professional game in 1995 and there is no doubt that that has enabled us to take on the southern hemisphere in a way that we could not have done without professionalising the game. The Rugby Football Union was mindful of the probable surge of interest in the game and it knew that it had to be prepared. Nearly 18 months or two years ago, representatives of Zurich, which sponsors rugby union, sat down with the RFU to consider what to do in the event of an enormous increase in interest in the game and how to capitalise on that to strengthen it from the grass roots. I compliment Zurich on the way in which it has supported rugby union and been proactive in ensuring that the game is sustainable from the grass roots upwards.
	Zurich, the RFU and MORI came together to produce a document, RugbyMaking an Impact, a MORI research report. It did not tell us anything that we did not knowit definitely did not tell the RFU anything it did not knowbut it quantified various matters. One of its most disappointing findings was that, even though we had such a fantastic win in Australia and the England team had been developed over the years before that, during the late 1990s and early 21st century, the number of clubs had declined. In 1998, there were 1,537 clubs, but by last year there were only 1,480. It was also disappointing to learn that the number of sides per club went down from 2.9 to 2.7 between the 199798 season and last year. While the game was flourishing at international level, there was a deterioration in the club structure and in the number of young people coming into the game.
	The RFU, Zurich and others, including Terry Burwell, the RFU's director of community rugbywho has played a central part in putting the RFU back on the map at the grass roots, through his work with my Department and Sport Englandhave been able to analyse the problem and are now investing in rugby in a very focused way. That is to be welcomed.
	Participation in rugby union involves about 500,000 regular players across the nation. There are also about 8,000 registered women and girls playing at 420 clubs, compared with only five clubs in 1983. So, while numbers have declined in the men's game, the women's and girls' game has developed. The premiership's development scheme, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, has reached 2,500 schools in the last couple of years, which is quite remarkable. The premiership could perhaps be described as limited, but it does commit itself to the development of the game through the schools sports co-ordinators and the specialist sports colleges linked to primary and secondary schools. That provides a structure whereby sports such as rugby union can plug into the school structure. I hope that we shall be able to respond to what the hon. Gentleman has said by continuing to get that development into schools. It is crucial, if rugby is to flourish, to get it right into the school structure.
	The hon. Gentleman's point about volunteering, litigation and insurance is an important one not just for rugby but across the whole spectrum of sport. If anything now acts as an impediment against volunteering and against new people coming into the sport, it is the issue of insuranceso much so that I had a number of insurance companies in to meet me a couple of weeks ago. We are working with themwork is also being done in the Home Officeto see how we can get insurance to amateur sports clubs, and a number of ideas are now being explored. That issue is an impediment to the continued development of some of our sports, which is very disappointing. I said to the representatives of the insurance companies that if we continue to make it difficult for young people to come into sport, and if we are not prepared to insure them, they will get into worse and probably more dangerous activities such as drugs and related issues. We are taking up that important issue, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we will pursue it.
	 In terms of capitalising on what the RFU has done, and on what the team did in Australia, the hon. Gentleman referred to the 1 million for the Sweet Chariot tour linking the world cup with national and local development initiatives. I was present when 2,000 school kids in Rotherham had their photographs taken with the cup. The two Members representing the Rotherham area and I also had our photographs taken with the cup. As someone who had to return early from Australia, I did not get the opportunity to have my photograph taken with the cup down under[Laughter.] Duty called, and I had to return. Seriously, however, I understand that the tour will arrive in the hon. Gentleman's constituency on 27 May, so he will be able to have his photograph taken in Middlesex.
	The RFU has also held more than 90 sessions of Come and Try It, which is another taster for young people between the ages of 13 and 16. Each of those sessions has introduced 40 youngsters to rugby, which is another means of development. It is paying off, because most of the sport's 1,480 amateur clubs have reported an upsurge in interest from new players. Pleasingly, 2,870 new coaches have obtained the tag rugby certificate in the last six months, and 2,270 new referees have been trained since last summer. That infrastructure is necessary to respond to the upsurge in interest, which we want to be sustainablewe do not want it just to last a year or two. That is why coaching, development and linking the club structure to schools are so important.
	On the hon. Gentleman's points about the professional game, my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt) had a meeting in the House only yesterday with the premiership clubs to discuss how we could assist them in taking forward their role. I hope that the RFU and the premiership will work together. We do not want divisions in the game, which we have seen in some other games. I hope that they can work together, and if they can do so I am sure that it will be for the betterment of the game in the round.
	In terms of stadiums, the premiership clubs have made strong representations, particularly since the world cup. While it is accepted that there was investment in football stadiums, which to some extent was a result of the tragedy at Hillsborough, I have said clearly to rugby union clubs that developing their stadiums is a matter for them. If such development can extend into the community so that they become multi-sports clubs, for example, whereby the amateur game can also be developed, the Government will give serious consideration to helping them. The straight commercial aspects are for the clubs to develop, but we will try to help them with the community side. In terms of community work, I am sure that the game will benefit from players going into schools, in which the hon. Gentleman said that all premiership clubs are involved. All premiership players are contracted to work with local schools and clubs for a minimum of 35 hours a month, which is to be welcomed, and I am sure that there will be some spin-off from that.
	Nothing is stopping the RFU or the premiership coming together to create a rugby foundation. The moneys that go into the Football Foundation from the football premiership are ostensibly from television rights5 per cent. of the television money goes into it. That is roughly 20 million a year, which is matched by the FA, and we then match it through Sport England, so there is a three-way partnership. If rugby union wants to develop a foundation, there is nothing to stop it doing so.
	The hon. Gentleman raised tax issues. At the request of those representing a number of sports, we have introduced community amateur sports clubs, which can claim a number of breaks, including gift aid. That has been very useful to many clubs. Woodford rugby football club, for instance, had a major debt to finance a new clubhouse in 1994, and was in financial trouble by 2002. This year SportsAid raised 200,000, and a crucial 45,000 was claimed back in gift aid by means of the CASC package introduced in 2002. MoreoverI think that rugby, tennis and cricket will gain from this considerablythere is the monetary rate relief that we shall introduce this April, having announced it at the end of last year.
	Amateur clubs now get pretty well what any club would get with charitable status. There are about 110,000 sports clubs in this country, of which an estimated 40,000 could gain by registering as CASCs and gaining monetary rate relief. At the last count, towards the end of last month, only 2,300 had applied. The information takes a little time to filter through, but I know that the RFU, along with other governing bodies, wants to ensure that the message is sent to clubs. We have now established a one-stop shop in every region, organised by Sport England. Anyone who telephones the Sport England office will be given the information, and every effort will be made to make the process as simple as possible. Last week, a group addressed by a Treasury colleague and me complimented us on the simplicity of the formsnot something for which the Treasury is usually commended.
	Rugby union is experiencing a renaissance in this country, and is pulling rugby league in its wake. As a sports Minister, I welcome that. I want us to do all that we can to capitalise on it, which is why we have been engaged in discussions with the RFU. We want to ensure that the club structure is linked with schools, and we are using the wider development of rugby for the benefit of other sports. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, obesity and the health of the nation are probably the subject of more reports than they have been for many years. The role of sport and other physical activity now features much more on the political agenda. If sport does not capitalise on that, it will miss a golden opportunity. The way in which the RFUalong with Zurich and, indeed, MORIhave approached this is commendable, and I am sure it will pay dividends in the future. I hope we shall see many more clubs, much more participation in the playing of the game, and many more spectators. I think
	The motion having been made after Seven o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
	Adjourned at twenty-six minutes to Nine o'clock.